
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 


LO.-.. Copyright No. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 


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OLD COUNTRY IDYLLS 



JOHN STAFFORD 
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(llAY8d188«) nZJ 

NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1896 

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Copyright, 1896, 

By Dodd, Mead and Company. 
All rights reserved. 


JHinbcrsitg ?Prf2s: 

[oMN Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A 

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TO 


MRS. E. LYNN LINTON 





I 


i 


CONTENTS 


Page 

I. Doris and 1 i 

II. The Mayor of Bonshurst . . 29 

III. Under a Greenwood Tree . . 59 

IV. The Squire’s Amanuensis ... 98 

V. Connie 125 

VI. Sandro 152 

VII. Assyria in London 182 

VIII. The Vicar of Wrocksley . . . 212 

IX. Crooked Ways 230 

X. Elsie 264 



Doris and I 


I 

There was evil in front of us, and much aching 
of hearts and suffering. But the throstle sang 
in the sycamore tree, and the swallows curved 
and twittered all about us, and in the rich amber 
light we could see that all was fair and good ; 
and then our eyes would meet and we thought 
not of evil, Doris and I. We spoke little, our 
hearts being very full, and words mere idleness. 
Doris looked out again to the west, leaning her 
head against me, and taking my hand as it twined 
over her shoulder. We were in the orchard by 
the old green wicket, where, a month ago, before 
the blossoms had burst their bulbs, she had al- 
lowed me to tell her an old tale, and had said 
one word of her own to give it finish. And as 
the throstle sang his love-song, and the sun sank 
to his bed behind the hills, I thought of then 
and now, and my head lowered and I kissed her 

I I 


DORIS AND I 


forehead gently. Then Doris sighed, as if a 
spell was broken. For I had come to tell of my 
windfall ; that I was no longer a poor man ; that 
instead of waiting for years, we might begin our 
married life on my return from Canada in three 
months or so ; and the sudden happiness of the 
thing had wrapt us round and silenced the pair 
of us. Now that the first flush of it was over, 
we remembered the fleeting minutes, and fell to 
talking. What we said is of no account here ; 
but so little did we dream of harm, or accident 
of nature to cross our happiness, that not once 
did we mention hwi, though we knew that he 
was coming next day, to stay perhaps for some 
weeks, as sick people do. 

Then we said good-bye, and I opened the 
wicket to pass through ; but, seeing the wet in 
her eyes, lingered awhile longer till she was smil- 
ing again, when I let her go. But I looked back 
again every dozen yards or so ; and when I got 
across the second meadow and stood by the 
stile before vaulting into the road, I could still 
see the straight white figure among the green 
and the waving handkerchief. So I asked God 
to keep her, and went my way with the rose she 
had given me. 


2 


DORIS AND I 


Walking home in the pink of. the twilight, the 
heaviness at leaving her wore off as I looked into 
the future, and saw what was there, or rather 
what I pictured in it. For when love is the 
warp and fortune the woof, what will not the 
shuttle of fancy do? Yesterday, things had been 
so different. Of all my airy castles there had 
seemed hardly one left, and I had built a good 
few. Before I knew Doris, such imaginings had 
never troubled me ; but when I had met her at 
Winchcomb flower show, love had touched me 
with its wand, and all of a sudden the dead wall 
of my life, like that in Chaucer’s ‘Romaunt’ — 
for I had read a thing or two in the long winter 
nights before the old place had been hammered 
into other hands — seemed all alive with pic- 
tures. Everything was lit up ; the world seemed 
a new place, and life had sweeter meanings after 
T had looked into Doris’s eyes and she into mine. 
And when, after many months, I plucked up 
courage to ask her heart how it was, and she 
told me, the future widened out in such a fashion 
that the sight of jt nearly made me light-headed. 

Had I known how things were I should have 
held my tongue through shame and hopelessness. 
But my father never gave a sign that ruin was 
3 


DORIS AND I 


near upon him ; that my comfortable heritage, 
as I deemed it, was mortgaged to the last rood. 
The crash came, and then the sale, and then life 
in a little cottage with a broken-down fatlier and 
a changed look-out, which perhaps made me 
over-moody. For sometimes I despaired of 
ever possessing Doris, or of being able, under 
many years, to support her -in a way fitting to her 
up bringing. Everything would be broken off, 
and it would be all a dead wall again. 

It was in some such mood that the notary’s 
letter found me that morning. I had seldom 
heard of Uncle Ben, and had never seen him. 
He had in early manhood deeply wronged my 
father in some way, and his name was rarely 
mentioned. I handed the letter across the table 
to my father, and he sat dumb like myself, his 
face working strangely between anger and some- 
thing softer. Then he put it down and said : 
‘ Conscience-money, lad, every penny on it ! 
But it’s saved you from my folly, so tek it, an’ 
thank God for teaching Ben repentance an’ me 
forgiveness — no easy lesson, when a brother — 
well, well, let it lie. Poor Ben ! ’ 

Little wonder, then, that I saw visions as I 
walked home in the light of the afterglow. It 


4 


DORIS AND I 


was nearly dusk when I arrived at the cottage, 
and as I turned for a last look at the burnished 
hills, a bat came between me and the light, and 
fluttered mockingly before me. But I kissed 
my rose and laughed at the flittermouse. 

The sun was soon back again, and I was up 
and about ere the birds had done greeting it. 
Have you ever seen an April sunrise in the Vale 
of Evesham, reader, when it first slants through 
the mist and kisses the dew from young leaf and 
blossom till the ten thousand orchards blaze 
up all about you as only they can in that fair 
‘ Garden of England ’ ? I own to joining the 
birds that morning as they turned to the east and 
anthemed-in the lord of day; for somehow I 
couldn’t help it — the song was inside me and 
would out, and it was only the Old Hundredth 
after all. Then my spirit seemed to go forth 
from me and to fly to a little open lattice among 
the pear-branches, where I thought I saw one 
all white and pure, with golden nimbus, and eyes 
like the cornflowers, gazing out into the love and 
light of this same day-birth, her lips on the move 
with tremulous somethings which her heart sent 
up, being over-full. And so it was, as I learned 
long afterwards, though how these things be is 
5 


DORIS AND I 


not for me to measure, being a simple man and 
content to see the beauty of the mallow-flower 
without asking why it shuts at noon. But I was 
reminded again of the vision, when, late that 
day, I watched from the deck of the steamer the 
same sun sink into the sea. For the gold of his 
going so mingled with the blue of the waves and 
the white of their foam, that Doris rose up before 
me as if out of it all, and then seemed to dis- 
solve again into the elements, like the fair Cyane 
whom Ovid sings of ; and I stood and gazed, 
tracing the white and the gold and the blue, all 
blended together in the dance of the water. 

II 

I had lived some twenty-three years in the 
world without knowing much more of it than 
what our own valley had to show and its neigh- 
bourhood — a city or two and a group of market 
towns, all pretty much alike, especially at fair 
time, when farmers see them oftenest. So that 
what I saw on my long journey westwards made 
me wonder and marvel as young people do, when 
they go for the first time beyond the mountains 
and see what is there. I should like to tell of it 

6 



DORIS AND I 


all — the storm and sunshine ; the rare sights 
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; the landing at 
Quebec ; and the days and nights on the rail- 
way, and the rest. But I am no hand at making 
such things happen again in your armchair ; and, 
moreover, they don’t concern the drift of what I 
am telling you. 

Nor need I say much about the farm and 
personal estate which had come to me by my 
uncle’s will. I found that the latter came to 
some eighty thousand dollars, chiefly invested 
in Northern Pacific and other stock ; and the 
former a large tract of prairie -land, with house, 
farm-buildings, and every appointment of a first- 
class property. There was a new railway creep- 
ing up, which would double its value in a few 
years’ time ; and it was for me to say, after I 
had seen the place, whether I should let it, or 
wait, or sell it right out. I wrote the lawyer, 
saying that for the present I would take it in 
hand till the corn was safely harvested. 

So one thing leads on to another, and we 
prepare our own destiny without knowing it. 
But I had looked at things in a practical way 
and according to my lights ; and the notary 
commended me ; and Doris sent a letter along 
7 


DORIS AND I 


saying : ‘ Yes, Dick; but don’t tarry the thrashing 
too,’ which was only sweetheart-like. 

The weeks passed on, and I found plenty to 
occupy and interest me, as was natural. I let 
Boss Wilson keep much of his authority — he 
had been in charge of the farm since the death, 
and his loquacious company was not disagreeable 
after I had learned to know him. One day in 
the town near by I happened upon a Worcester 
man — one Henshaw — and his clannish good 
feeling made the place still less lonely. Then 
every week Doris wrote down her little heart for 
me to read it, and I sent her an account of 
mine ; and all the while the same sun warmed 
us, and the same moon set us thinking one of 
the other when the day was over and our souls 
skipped out for a game at dreams. She was 
there and I was here, and soon there would be 
no there and here, but only one place and we 
in it. 

Thinking to this tune I jumped into the saddle 
one August morning, and rode to the post-office 
for the usual weekly letter. I always rode over, 
because the postboy who passed us on his way 
to the next settlement waited for the second 
mail at noon. I met Mr. Henshaw at the door 
8 


DORIS AND I 


of the office with two letters and a newspaper in 
his hands. 

‘ Homin’, Mr. Sedley,’ said he ; ‘ lot o’ let- 
ters this mail ; let me hold the cob till you come 
out.’ 

That was the beginning of it — there was no 
letter. I rejoined Henshaw, and walked down 
with him to his store, heavy with disappointment. 

‘Like to see the paper?’ said he, as I was 
leaving, after ordering some supplies of his man. 
‘ ’Tain’t often I get one ; but my brother’s hay- 
ricks ’a bin blazin’, an’ he’s sent the account of 
it. Arl new hay too, an’ on’y part insured. 
Ain’t it a pity?’ 

I said it was, and looked moodily through the 
columns for news that might interest me. I only 
learned that there had been a regatta at Eve- 
sham ; and that our old doctor at Ranston had 
sold his practice to a Dr. Robson — that was 
all. But as I rode home I kept muttering that 
doctor’s name, wondering where I had heard it 
before ; till suddenly it came to me, bringing a 
lot of something else with it. 

Why had Doris never mentioned him beyond 
the postscript in her first letter, weeks ago ? I 
had clean forgotten she had a Cousin Stephen, so 
■ 9 


DORIS AND I 


little did I heed him ; but he was still at Ranston, 

still perhaps an inmate of her home. Why 

Here I dropped the reins, and drew out her 
last letter, to steady me. I read it through, and 
the dear words brought kindliness back, and 
I kissed her name at the end, saying some one 
was a fool. 

But the doubt had found entrance, and grew, 
as cancers do, without our knowing it. For the 
days went on, and no letter came, no sign, till I 
grew half-wild at the cruelty of it. I wrote, re- 
proaching her ; and another week went and an- 
other. At last the letter came. The postboy 
handed it to me as I stood at the gate — I dare- 
say he wondered why I was always there — and 
I ripped it open, while my heart pumped fit to 
break itself. Then the paper dropped from my 
hands, and I held on to the gate with a singing 
in my ears, and a sudden weakness in seeing, 
which darkened the sun and all beneath it. . . . 

Doris unfaithful — it wasn’t natural. Our souls 
had grafted, and we were one ; we were two 
streams that had met to turn the same mill-wheel 
together ; our hearts were bound with' ligaments 
of their own growing ; there was no undoing 
what nature had so willed. Yet there was her 

lO 


DORIS AND I 


handwriting, her own words in good black ink 
telling white it was a liar. 

Then all at once, through the rush and swirl 
of it, came the thought of the new doctor, and a 
queer coldness went through me, as if I had 
been turned to clay before my time. The life 
seemed to go out from me, and I could scarcely 
move my feet as, half staggering, I went indoors 
and dropped into a chair. Again I read the 
note, though every cursed word was burnt in my 
brain for ever. 

‘ I cannot marry you, dear — it is impossible. I 
like you — I am fond of you as I told you in the 
orchard that evening ; but I cannot be your wife — 
I cannot indeed. Oh, I wish I had told you ear- 
lier how things were ; it was cruel of me to let you 
go on loving me without telling you the truth. I 
was afraid to at last ; but now you are away it 
seems less difficult to say. Forgive me; look else- 
where for a more fitting mate — some one who can 
fully share your new life with you, and help you 
as a wife should, with head, heart, and hand — some 
one who can love you better than Doris.’ 

An hour went by, maybe two, while the hard- 
ening went on ; while the love died away, and 
the light and the joy of life dimmed and flick- 
ered out, leaving me in darkness with hate and 


DORIS AND I 


revenge. Then I rose up and looked round at 
the difference of things ; for all seemed altered, 
and not the same. I moved to my desk, and, 
unlocking a drawer, took out all her letters, and 
they too had altered, and were merely so many 
pieces of paper, not sacred things to be touched 
with reverence, like bits of the holy rood. But 
the breath of lavender from them got at some 
soft corner in me, making my eyes hot and 
tightening my throat. For a second or two I 
paused, looking at the vision that grew out of 
them, till anger puffed and blew it all away, 
leaving me with only the bundle of papers. 
This I wrapped up, along with a dead rose and 
a lock of yellow hair, and directed to Miss 
Hanlow, Ranston-in-the-Vale, Worcestershire, 
England. 

‘ Here,’ said 1, as Nita, my uncle’s old house- 
keeper, hobbled in to lay the cloth for tea ; ‘ let 
one of the lads take this to the depot before 
dark. No matter ; I’ll take it myself. — Where’s 
Boss? ’ 

^ Coin’ away?’ said Boss Wilson, as I pulled 
up, half an hour later, at the gate he was mend- 
ing — ‘ just as the corn’s yellowin’ for the ma- 
chines? Summat wrong? You look kinder hit 


12 


DORIS AND I 


— hope ’tain’t serious.’ He wiped his face, look- 
ing hard at mine, which I turned away, feeling 
it was a tell-tale. 

‘You won’t be alone long,’ I went on. ‘ My 
father is on his way, and will take possession of 
the farm and see to things in my absence. I 
have asked him to keep you on, Boss, and I 
think you’ll find him a good sort — Good-bye. 
See you again some day when I’ve — when I’ve 
found what I want.’ I glanced down at his 
furrowed face and saw kindness in it. 

‘ Lost summat, gaffer ? ’ said he, and I could 
feel the search of his look. He was a shrewd 
man, twice my age, and may have noticed 
many things since we had been together. 

‘ Ay, I’ve lost something,’ I answered ; ‘ but 
it’s not that I’m after, Boss. No use hunting 
for broken bubbles, I take it.’ 

‘No, ’tain’t,’ drawled Boss; ‘but whatever 
you’re after, it’ll tek some findin’, I guess, an’ 
you may scour the world up and down an’ find 
it in yourself when all’s done. We’re queer 
crittars, an’ off our feet half our time. Have a 
good knock round, gaffer; an’ when it’s all 
burnt out, come back again an’ mek friends wi’ 
things.’ 


13 


DORIS AND 1 


My hand went to his involuntarily, and we 
gripped hard. 

‘ S’long, gaffer,’ was all I heard as the horse 
leaped away with me down the rough track. 

‘So long,’ T said to the hot silence and the 
western solitude, where I had dreamed my 
dreams awhile tolerant of the summer loneli- 
ness, as long as I could people it with fancies 
and see Doris and good company beyond it. 
But to remain there with my dead hopes all 
about me, grinning like marionettes which love 
had made caper, deluded by its own magic ; to 
live on through the long monotonous heat with 
no opposite shore for the bridge of thought to 
touch, with no future but a fogbank where had 
been fair country — no, I could not. 

Ill 

I need not dwell on that period. It lives in 
my memory more like a hideous dream than so 
many weeks and months of actual life, and, like 
a dream, there are only portions of it which 
stand out from the shadows — adventures, inci- 
dents, scraps of scenery, seen in clearer mo- 
ments. It is enough to say that I came round 
14 


DORIS AND I 


gradually, and began to see things as they 
should be seen, though there was still a weight 
under my lungs to keep me in mind always of 
what might have been. But the hate was all 
gone, and love alone was left. Yes, love was 
left, though badly nourished, having no hopes 
to diet it ; and I got accustomed to think of 
Doris as one who was dead and yet living, and 
very lovable withal, as my heart had found out, 
having grown warm again through long thinking 
of her. 

So a year passed on, and left me minus the 
devil and some thousands of dollars. 

I had found my way into Colorado, and was 
a miner at one of the great joint-stock claims, 
which have taken the place of the old-fashioned 
diggings. The rough work suited my humour, 
and there was life and go in the town, and much 
distraction in the game of Pharaoh, of which 
more in its place. For nine months I had not 
heard from Canada, and had ceased to think of 
the place. My father had taken kindly to his 
new life, which was all I needed to know. I 
wished to be, and was, a solitary in the world, 
though I mixed much with men, finding more 
isolation in a crowd than in lonely places. But 

15 


DORIS AND I 


I was beginning to be restless again, and to wish 
for another change, when something happened 
which I had not looked for, but which makes 
me always thankful I played Pharaoh that night 
at Midas’s. 

It was nothing more than a quarrel and a 
whipping out of revolvers, and then a sudden 
lane of rough figures looking on while the two 
fired from either end. I heard the low thud of 
the bullet as it struck Black Jake, and I caught 
him in my arms as he fell backwards with sud- 
den limpness and whitening face. I had only 
seen him once before, and he had roused a 
vague recollection which had made me look 
again at him, wondering what it was about him 
that was so familiar. He had been at one of 
the far tables, or perhaps his speech would have 
given me the cue. Now, as he opened his eyes 
and stared up into mine, he turned his lips from 
the flask and said : ^ God forgive us — it’s 

Master Sedley ! ’ 

‘ That’s so. Take a pull at this, and tell me 
who are you,’ said I, surprised at my own name. 

The liqueur was of little use ; for his heart was 
slowing every moment ; but it brought a flicker 
to his face and a word or two more to his lips. 

i6 


DORIS AND I 


* Gie me yer ear — closer,’ he whispered. ‘ Bob 
Hilton — Ranston postman — ay, yo’ know me 
now. They want me — want me for robbing the 
bags. Tell ’em death has got me ; an’ tell young 

doctor chap as I hopes to He lamed me 

the beginnin’ — he Yore letters — Miss 

Doris’s — I stopped ’em His money. 

Hope no harm done, sir — I Christ 

save ’ His eyes glazed, a tremble went 

through him, and he slipped off without another 
word, leaving me staring at the dyed whiskers 
and dissipated features with ringing ears, and a 
thousand thoughts and feelings all set loose to- 
gether, to the overwhelming of my wits, which 
seemed quite undone. 

Long after they had carried him away, and 
the noise and confusion were spent, I stood 
leaning on the bar counter, staring vacantly 
through the smoke of the saloon, seeing and 
hearing nothing, but conscious of a growing 
fiend within me, and a tightening of my teeth 
as I reckoned things up and saw in all its clear- 
ness the perfidy that had come between us. 
The letter — was not that a part of it? Could 
Doris from her heart’s heart have written such a 
letter at all? It was a forgery, a trick, and I 
2 17 


DORIS AND I 


had been a fool to be duped by it — nay, a vil- 
lain in very truth ; for I had doubted Doris, and 
given her pain and misery perhaps a thousand 
times worse than my own. 

Yet the letter was clear enough, said the ghost 
of -Doubt; it was in her own characteristic hand- 
writing, said Memory ; and there was no forging 
that, put in Doubt again. 

Then a resolution came to me, and I walked 
out into the open air, and breathed it in with a 
long inhalation, as men do at sudden relief, or 
when stirred with new purpose. 

There were evil things in my heart ; but there 
was one little corner where hope stirred, as if 
after a long sleep. I could feel it as I looked 
up to the heavens, where the stars were twink- 
ling down at me, as if they knew a thing or two, 
having seen Doris only a few hours agone. 

Next morning I started for New York, and in 
four more days was on the Atlantic, gazing at the 
last point of Sandy Hook as it sank lower and 
lower, till the horizon was an unbroken line and 
America nowhere. 

But as we sped eastwards through the long 
days and nights, as I drew nearer to Doris and 
him and the truth, the fiends grew busier within 

i8 


DORIS AND I 


me, and gave my little babe of Hope such a 
hustling that I well-nigh lost sight of it in the 
tumult. 

I had been away eighteen months, and what 
might a man not do in that time with an impres- 
sionable young girl who had the best evidence 
that her lover was unfaithful? They were 
cousins, and had been together in earlier years ; 
he was a highly educated, and, contrasted with 
me, a brilliant, perhaps a fascinating man. He 
had secured his diploma ; but the arduous study 
had broken him down, and to recruit himself he 
had left his London home to pass some weeks 
among the breezy hills of Worcestershire, the 
guest of his father’s sister, the daily companion, 
no doubt, of Doris. He had seen her beauty, 
her young susceptibility to the influences about 
her, and he had wormed his way into her heart 
and cankered it, as grubs do roses. So hatred 
totted it all up and made me feel as murderers 
do. God forgive me ! It is all passed now, 
and it was love’s doing wuth all three of us. 

It was a time of growing exultation when, late 
on the ninth day, the huge vessel eased its throb- 
bings, and steamed at half speed into the Mersey, 
just as the ten thousand harbour lights were 

19 


DORIS AND I 


dotting the dim lines of its shores and the stars 
above us opening blinking eyes to watch our 
landing. But I saw nothing but the tenders as 
they splashed up to us ; the long landing-stage 
as they paddled us sliorewards ; the half-dis- 
cernible landscape ahead as the train rushed 
with me and my hell-brood to the defiled place 
which had been as sweet and pure to me as an 
Eden before evil had crawled in, and hissed its 
lies to the sweet mother of us all. 

It was past midnight when I arrived at Wor- 
cester. The old city was slumbering, and the 
great cathedral was watching over it, and telling 
out the hours to its deaf ears as the fly rumbled 
noisily to the hotel, where I had perforce to stay 
till daylight enabled me to continue my journey 
by the early train. 

I lay on the bed half-dressed, listening to the 
quarters as they chimed through the silence one 
after the other, and each time the familiar sounds 
crossed the current of my thoughts they swung 
me out of the morrow to other days, which their 
ringing brought back' irresistibly, till by-and-by 
I allowed memory to have its way entirely, and I 
lived again in the halcyon sunniness of bygone 


20 


DORIS AND I 


years. I closed my eyes to look at it all, and 
allowed it to float dreamlike and as it would, till 
patches of greyness came, and a fading of colour 
and form, and I was fast asleep. 

But as I lay like any log, and the hours went 
on, till all in the city but myself could hear the 
cathedral clock ring them out, some part of my 
brain woke up, and finding reason still a slug- 
gard, started straightway a- dreaming. It was a 
queer medley for the most part, and no better 
than other fantasies of the sort ; but to this day 
I remember it more as a real thing than a trick 
of the brain, if such it was. There in the dark- 
ness of the prairie was the deep red rose that 
Doris had given me, borne by an army of fire- 
flies, in whose united radiance the flower lay on 
a hammock of golden threads, and flitted before 
me mockingly while I stumbled in chase of it. 
Ay, it was the rose, and it blushed in the em- 
brace of Doris’s own hair. I had seen it shine 
so at sundown when the light got in it and made 
it luminous with a gold not its own, as the grass 
blades seem shafts of emerald fire when the 
glow-worms are among them. The phantasm 
rose and fell in the blackness, while the hundreds 
of little light points made a shifting circle round. 


21 


DORIS AND I 


On, on they flitted, ever eluding me as I stum- 
bled along, till there was a sudden clash of bells, 
when the little vision dissolved into a kind of 
crimson and golden atmosphere, in which I 
laved myself with beating hands, while it widened 
more and more, lighting all things round, till I 
saw that I stood in a crowded churchyard in all 
the soft sheen of a summer’s morning. I rubbed 
my eyes as the people moved about, some towards 
the wooden porch, some taking places on the 
path, till there was an avenue of smiling faces 
and one slim figure, followed by her maids, 
wending slowly through it. 

It was Doris, all white and beautiful in bridal 
vestments ; but her golden head was bent, and 
there was heaviness in her step. As if she were 
entering some prison-house, never to know 
liberty again, she paused at the porch, and looked 
long and wistfully back in the sunshine. And I 
could see the thin face and the pain deep down 
in her eyes, knowing all the meaning of her long 
look, but unable to move, as she passed in and 
out of my sight. Then the clanging of the bells 
died away into a melody of old time, which they 
quaintly chimed, while the people thronged into 
the church, leaving me alone among the head- 


22 


DORIS AND I 


stones. The agony was too much. I wrenched 
free my voice and shrieked her name — and 
awoke, still hearing the chiming, but realising 
gradually that it came from the cathedral tower, 
which I could see in the morning sun over the 
house-tops, and I guessed by its carillon that it 
had just gone nine. 

Now, I never believe in dreams, deeming 
them mere freaks of the brain when the will is 
not by to keep it in order ; but I sat down to 
breakfast uneasy and without appetite, looking 
in at that despairing white face with a growing 
sense of its ominousness, and chafing mightily 
at the fact that there was no train to take me on 
for another two hours. 

‘ Paper, sir ? ’ I heard the waiter say as I 
trifled with the toast. I dropped my eyes 
mechanically on to the folded sheet ; but only 
looked vacantly at it, or rather a headline, 
which, standing out from the rest, took my 
eyes, being definite, as the fire is in the dark- 
ness, or a candle flame, which we gaze at with- 
out noting. There was the name of my own 
village staring me in the face, and for a full 
minute I never saw it — Ranston-in-the-Vale. 
It was all a flash, as was my eagerness as I 

23 


DORIS AND I 


snatched up the paper and read the local items : 
^ Bellringers’ Dinner — Fire at the Hall — The 
Approaching Marriage of Dr. Robson.’ . . . 

I remember the sense of paralysis, the rush 
of darkness to the eyes, and then the sudden 
return of light as I jumped to my feet and stood 
a moment irresolute, with my watch in my hand. 
Quarter past ten — the ceremony was at eleven 
— three parts of an hour to do fifteen miles. A 
wave of helplessness swept over me, and then 
of hot strength — nothing less than the strength 
of despair, and, thank God, it carried me 
through. 

I shall never forget that ride. The horse 
was fresh — the pick of the best posting stables 
in Worcester — and I had much to do to keep 
it in while we breasted Redhill to the level of 
the London Road. Then I gave it its head 
and a tip from the heels, and away we shot like 
two mad things. Seeing nothing but the yellow 
road before me, I counted every spring of the 
animal as he skimmed along, scarcely seeming 
to touch the ground with his light hoofs, and 
flying faster and faster as he warmed to it and 
heard my cries of encouragement. For half 
an hour I let him go, till we came to a stiff hill 


24 


DORIS AND I 


not three miles from Ranston. Here I pulled 
him up and made him walk before the final rush 
in. He was impatient to get on, so was I, for 
from the top of the hill I knew I could see the 
church, and maybe some of the gathering people ; 
but I held him in and took out my watch. My 
heart sank — it was two minutes to eleven. I 
eased the reins with a shout, and in three bounds 
we were at the hill-top and away again. I could 
see the church now across the valley, and the 
flag at its tower, and the pigmy forms moving 
about the yard. But there was still hope, still 
a chance to snatch Doris back from her peril — 
for such was my purpose, and my dream had 
made me desperate. I set my teeth and let the 
good horse go. 

It was all over in ten minutes, and it was 
Doris’s doing as much as mine. She could 
not help it, maybe, and it was rather sudden 
to jilt a man just as the vicar was asking 
whether she would have him or no. But so it 
was ; and I had no sooner shown myself at the 
vestry door by which I had entered than she 
saw me, and with a ‘ Oh, Dick, Dick ! ’ stumbled 
towards me, and fell limp in my arms, and lay 
there like a cut lily and as speechless. I had 

25 


DORIS AND I 


carried her into the vestry, and was bathing her 
temples with the parson’s drinking water before 
the wedding party could realise what had come 
to them. He was the first to rush in, as was 
natural perhaps. 

Now I would not have harmed him just 
then, for all his wordy spleen, if he had not laid 
rough hands on me as he tried to force me from 
my place. But when the shock of his touch 
went through me, I laid Doris’s head down for 
one moment while I sprang to my feet, and, 
catching him by the collar and the small of the 
back, pitched him out of the open door with 
such good-will that he fell on the grass a dozen 
yards away and lay there, a huddled heap of 
blackness on the green. 

When I turned round, Doris was opening 
her eyes and looking up at her mother, asking 
where she was. I knelt and looked down at 
her ; she stared while you might count three ; 
and then her arms were round my neck, and I 
raised her in mine. 

He declared his love here at this wicket, as 
you had, dear, before him.’ 

‘ But the letter?’ I said. 

26 


DORIS AND I 


'Oh, how could you believe it, Dick? The 
letter was my second refusal, sent a week after 
he had taken to his practice. He must have 
forwarded it to you in the cover of one of mine. 

How cruel and wicked of him ! And you ’ 

She looked up, and there was such reproach in 
her eyes that I turned mine away, not daring to 
meet them. 

'Jealousy made a fool of me, Doris. How 
can I tell you ? You see the letter was so 
worded, that coming after your silence and on 
the top of my knowledge that he was still at 
Ranston, I ’ 

'Who told you he was still here? I avoided 
the subject for your sake.’ 

' 111 news travels fast,’ said I ; ' but don’t let 
us speak of it. He allowed the parcel to reach 
you — what did you think when you opened 
it?’ 

' When I was able to, I wrote you, asking what 
it meant,’ she said simply. 

' And I never answered ? ’ 

'No.’ 

I gazed at her nearly choking. What had my 
suffering been to hers? 

‘ And oh, I was so wretched, Dick,’ she went 
27 


DORIS AND I 


on in her naive way ; ^ and when he came a 
third time, full of sympathy, and offering to re- 
lieve poor mother of the debts which had nearly 
brought the old home to the brink of breaking, 
I — I said yes,” feeling that I had no will — 
that it was a duty thrust upon me. But it is all 
past now, isn’t it ? ’ 

Gladness made her sigh, and I could feel her 
sweet breath as she looked up at me. 

^ Do you forgive him, then ? ’ said I, looking 
away, and thinking of his abject figure as he 
writhed under my whip an hour ago. 

‘ Yes, yes, Dick ! and you must too. You 
have punished him enough, and he has promised 
to go away. Let us forget him — let us look 
upon it as a bad dream. Oh, Dick, my heart 
nearly runs over with its gladness — surely yours 
has nought else in it now ! You ’ 

It was a soft interruption, and she didn’t say 
it was rude. 

‘ God bless you ! ’ said I. 

* And you, Dick ! ’ said she. 

And then we joined hands and turned to the 
house, becoming one in love and charity, Doris 
and I. 


28 


The Mayor of Bonshurst 


I 

Looking down on the little vale of Bonshurst 
the traveller found much to engage the eye. 
The two hills, east and west, were pleasantly 
irregular, the one waving off to the distance in 
smooth, downy lines ; the other supporting a 
thick growth of piney woods, which, starting 
on the lower slopes, rose to the sky-line and 
made it feathery. Through the rich verdancy 
between the river curved, touching here and 
there the straighter line of the road ; while 
away, well ahead, a tall spire and a few higher 
gables above the trees showed where the town 
was. It was a simple enough scene, but it was 
compact and contented the vision. A tall, 
weary-looking man, moving with slow steps 
round Wextow Knoll, saw from its gentle emi- 
nence all the picture. It made him pause and 
29 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


lean on his staff with the look of one who has 
found something lost. His face, which had 
been hard and expressionless a minute before, 
softened into feeling ; something of tenderness 
warmed the cold darkness of his eyes, which, 
from the first glad outward look that saw and 
noted all it might, changed to one such as mem- 
ories make. He stood so a minute ; then, check- 
ing his dreaming with a vigorous ‘ Pah ! ’ 
resumed his way, with the same hard look as 
before — hard but observant in a cold way of all 
he passed. 

The sun fell behind the firs, tipping them 
with bronze ; motionless clouds, poised high, 
caught its light and reflected it down into the 
valley a deepening amber ; while the river mir- 
rored all above it, seeming itself a great sky 
ribbon waving athwart green. But the still air, 
which had held no sound save the solitary foot- 
fall of the stranger, became faintly tuneful. He 
stopped to listen. It was the sound of distant 
music, and was a lively air suggestive of tripping 
feet. It directed his eyes to the right of the 
town, where some way up the hill the trees 
opened to show the white front of a house of 
some size. It was in the Italian style, and 

30 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


looked well enough in its leafy setting. Above 
one of its towers a flag hung listlessly ; on the 
left of its terraced front a marquee stood ; while 
moving to and fro were many figures. 

As he walked on the traveller gazed curiously 
at the place, noting the gradual appearance of 
hundreds of tiny lights, which pointed with many 
colours the growing dimness. His steps were 
heavy now with fatigue, and he took to looking 
before him with weary expectancy. Presently a 
curve in the road brought him in sight of an inn, 
which he entered. 

Choosing a part of the kitchen which was par- 
titioned off from the company present, he or- 
dered some bread and cheese. The landlord's 
curious glance was repeated, and he lingered 
under cover of remarks on the weather, the suc- 
cess of the Mayor’s garden-party, &c. He saw 
a man of doubtful age. The pale, clean-shaven 
features were deeply lined ; the closely- cut hair 
was white ; and the heavy brows made grey 
bushiness over dark, sombrous eyes which seemed 
to brood beneath them like unquiet spirits. The 
spare, wasted figure gave a hanging looseness to 
the black attire, which from its cut seemed more 
suited to a younger man than to one so well in 

31 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


years. But all at once the host felt powerfully 
uncomfortable, and began to stumble with his 
words. The eyes had turned to him and were 
reading him through. 

‘ Go on, pray,’ said the stranger ; * you inter- 
est me. Who is this Mayor of yours ? He 
appears to be a good man.’ 

^ Yes, sir, he is — a very good man. He’s 
about the most popular man in these parts, is 
Mr. Hulman; a man, I might say ’ 

‘ Rufus Hulman ? ’ 

^The same, sir. You’ve heard tell of him, 
perhaps? His name’s in the air, so to speak — 
sort of household word, like Beckley’s Entire. 
Yonder, just to the left o’ them poplars, is the 
Hulman Paper Mills ; just up the road is the 
Hulman Almshouses ; an’ to-day it’s Hulman’s 
Annual, as we calls it — /efe an’ garden-party for 
the working men an’ their families. Him an’ the 
local gentry gets it up — the Mertons, the Som- 
ersets, an’ Lady Floxmore ; she’s his right 
hand in these things, an’ they do say ’ 

‘ And that is his house on the hill ? ’ inter- 
rupted the other, looking up at the tiny lights. 

‘ Sorrenter, sir ; built seven years ago, or it 
may be eight. Silas, when did the Mayor build 

32 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


the new house ? ’ This with head in air, in- 
tended for ears over the partition. He slid off 
while the answer came. 

‘It’ll be eight years come Easter, Mister 
Webber,’ said an aged voice ; ‘ for don’t yer 
remember they was stopped for five weeks or 
more ’cos o’ the frost? What a winter that 
were to be sure ! There’d not bin the likes of 
it for years — not since Ben Orlock, the mill 
foreman, met his end by Burbury Copse, an’ we 
had to dig a way through the snow to get to the 
churchyard. That was ’fore your time, Felix.’ 

‘ Ay,’ said another and younger voice ; ‘ but 
I’ve heard tell of it. It was you as found him, 
warn’t it ? ’ 

‘Nay, it were Hulman as found him,’ re- 
turned Silas. ‘ He’d seen the fight an’ the last 
tumble from Baxter’s orchard, an’ not noticing 
either of them get up again, he ran across to 
see what was amiss. It was him running as 
started me. When I got there he was kneeling 
by Mark Ruthway an’ calling his name. But 
Mark could hear no names, any more than 
Ben ; an’ his seeming the worse case — for he’d 
broke a blood-vessel an’ was like to die any 
minute, poor chap — we took him between us 
3 33 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


to the Red Lion.” Hulman, anxious like, 
wouldn’t leave Mark, so me an’ Sandy, the pot- 
man, went back to Ben, thinking to find him 
sitting up an’ rubbing his head, wondering, may 
be, what had chanced. But he was quite dead 
— dead as nails, Felix.’ 

Silas paused a second, then went on : 

‘ I stood by him while Sandy run for Shap- 
low, the constable, an’ I shan’t forget them 
minutes long as I live. He was a rough sort 
was Ben, an’ he hadn’t a friend in the mill 
’xcept Hulman ; but to see him lying there so 
white an’ still, wi’ the weir moaning like a live 
thing, an’ the first snowflakes blowing up on 
the wind an’ wriggling all about us — it wasn’t 
nice, I can tell yer. But just for doing that I 
had to go before the crowner an’ answer more 
questions than there are in the catechism — an’ 
how he did go on to be sure, ’cos I couldn’t 
properly describe the man I had seen walking 
away from behind the furze-bushes ; but how 
could I tell with the air full o’ snow-dust as it 
was? He appeared to be a stranger, that was 
all I could say ; an’ he might have stolen 
Baxter’s mare an’ he might not ; they never 
found out. However, the jury brought it in 
34 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


manslaughter, an’ when the ’sizes came, Mark 
got a long sentence ; but it seemed hard on the 
lad, for he had only intended giving Ben a 
thrashing, an’ no more meant killing than you 
do when you give the whip to that jibbing horse 
o’ yours. Ben deserved a whipping if ever man 
did.’ 

‘ What had he done?’ 

‘ What had he done ? He’d said light things 
of as sweet a girl as ever man saw an’ felt the 
better for seeing. She was a girl in a thousand 
was Prue Wenham, an’ Mark was in love with 
her. She’d refused him, but that made no dif- 
ference, as Ben found out. And who do you 
think she’d lost her heart to all the while? 
Why, Rufus Hulman. He married her two 
years after when he’d been made manager, an’ 
not so long after that he paid old Carton out 
with some money that was left her, an’ became 
sole owner. At that time o’ day the mill was 
drove by water power; now they can’t get 
enough breeze to feed the engines. He’s 
made his way, has Hulman, an’ now there’s 
talk of him getting a rung higher on the ladder. 
Wonder if it’ll come off? Stranger things have 
happened, Felix.’ 


35 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


‘ The daughter won’t like it.’ 

‘But she’ll be married, too, Tore long,’ said 
Silas with a chuckle. ‘Young Somerset ’ll see 
to that, an’ a fine girl he’ll have. She’s the 
beauty o’ Bonshurst to my thinking, an’ knows 
it no more than a flower in the field. Pity she 
caught the fever from them people, but she’s 
getting on well, folks say, at that foreign place 

they took her Who is it, lad ? What’s he 

standing there for ? ’ 

Felix stared up as if the question were his 
also, but said nothing as the stranger turned 
and walked away. Silas’s glasses only showed 
an empty doorway. 

‘ ’Feared to know you, Silas,’ said Webber, 
going to the door, and causing the old man to 
hobble there too. But he could only see a dark 
figure moving away in the moonlight. 

II 

The stranger went on, past the first cottages 
which began the town, till he came to the lich- 
gate of the churchyard. In its shadow he 
paused some moments, then issued from the 
other side and threaded his way among the 

36 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


grey and white headstones till he came to one 
near the chancel, at which he stopped. It was 
a neglected-looking stone, greening with time, 
and he had to move aside the dewy hanks of 
grass in order to read its chiselled words. It 
was a woman’s name, and his bared head was 
bent over it some two or three minutes ; but 
there was no tenderness in his features as he 
looked up again — they were harder than ever, 
though his lashes were wet, as if his downward 
look had been of softer sort. He moved away, 
less certainly than before, looking about him 
searchingly, but only troubling to read the more 
pretentious monuments. He came at last to a 
railed vault, showing black words against marble : 
‘ Beatrice Adelaide, the beloved wife of Rufus 
Hulman, Esq.’ He read on through all the 
tablet had to say. 

The band on the hill sent down lively melody ; 
some roysterers passed in loud holiday humour, 
and across their voices the church clock struck 
nine, passing then into a quaint chiming which 
caused the traveller’s head to turn listeningly as 
he was leaving by the other gate. But the poor 
broken notes died away, leaving only the merry 
tunings of the band, which, waving down on a 
37 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


wind-puff, got into Silas’s feet as he passed by, 
and made him cut a stiff-legged caper for Felix 
to grin at ; while the weathercock gave a twist 
of its tail to show in its own way which way the 
wind blew that night at Bonshurst. For the 
music ceased only to give way to a cheer, re- 
peated at intervals as when heroes speak to many 
listeners. Then came a final blare from the hill, 
and, by-and-by, Bonshurst was alive with home- 
comers, garrulous of what had passed, and full of 
applause, which rang round a name. ‘ Hulman ’ 
had never been so much ‘ in the air,’ and Silas, for 
one, was glad when the streets quietened again, and 
the lights began to show at the upper windows. 

He sat in his arm-chair, with a spirit still con- 
vivial, and his thoughts were busy as he smoked 
his last pipe. Hulman might have been their 
starting-place, but other figures came in, and 
other years, and many memories made Silas 
young again. Such musings are the luxury of 
age, and sudden recalls to the wrinkled present 
tend to irritate. Silas started up with a glare 
at the door and shouted : 

‘ Who’s there ? ’ 

His answer was another knock, and he went 
to the door, candle in hand. Taking down the 

38 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


wooden bar he raised the latch, but another hand 
pushed wide the door, and Silas saw enter the 
same tall man who had piqued his curiosity ear- 
lier in the evening. He sank into a chair wea- 
rily, and Silas, with an odd mixture of deference 
and anger at such free usage, closed the door 
and faced his visitor, 

‘ Have you forgotten me, Silas?’ 

The old man felt a sudden falling back into 
the past he had been musing of. Unable to 
sj^eak, he stood staring at the figure in the chair 
with the look of one who had summoned a spirit 
and repented of the rashness. But the man he 
dimly saw was so unlike what ought to have 
appeared that the reality of the visit came home 
to him. He bent suddenly and peered closely 
at the face upturned to him. 

* Mark Ruthway ! ’ 

* So men called me before I became a num- 
ber. Can you welcome me, Silas ? ’ 

There was no mistaking the welcome. It 
might have won a Timon to kinder views. But 
if Ruthway felt, he betrayed no emotion. Silas 
laughed and cried, shook hands several times, 
and in glad dazedness got together a simple 
meal without hearing the protestations that it 

■39 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


was not needed. He rattled on with such news 
of twenty years as he could think of, and here 
and there his listener looked round with momen- 
tary interest ; but he asked no questions and 
answered few. He ate nothing, and long after 
Silas had gone to his rest he sat staring moodily 
into the fire, with hot burning eyes which seemed 
to see there only a vision to feed hatred and 
revenge. 

Under the moon the little town was very still, 
and so was all the vale, except where the river 
fell white through Burbury Weir with gentle 
hoarseness, or when some late carriage crept 
carefully down the hill to slide swiftly away along 
the level of the road. But soon the weir spoke 
alone with the night, a drowsy burden which 
seemed to close the illumined eyes of Sorrento 
and send it to sleep among its trees. The hours 
went by, but still the low, sad voice from the 
river murmured on, and all the while the Mayor 
heard it as he tossed beneath his eider-down and 
cursed at fortune. 

And yet it had been a day of triumphs, with 
purports which touched fine issues, such as feed 
ambition and make it big. What might he not 
do with all Bonshurst behind him, with firm foot 
40 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


among the gentry, and a title on his arm to smile 
him into highest places ? Why such a pinch of 
salt on the tail of the day ? such a pale vision of 
a face among the leaves, with eyes that knived 
him through, making conscience bleed and stain 
all the brave finery of his success ? 

He lay still, hot with thoughts which had 
turned at last to arguing with his bedfellow. For 
conscience may be talked down, or laughed into 
silence, especially if menace show a feeble hand, 
or a willingness to be negotiated out of court. 
But the voice of the weir What was it tell- 

ing, to-night of all times? The Mayor got up 
and closed the window fretfully. It was a relief 
to turn the gas up and see substantial things 
again. He paced to and fro with his thumbs in 
the rope of his dressing-gown ; and after some 
time he had walked into comparative quietness. 
He still saw the face among the leaves ; but he 
looked at it square-jawed and firmly, and in no 
way afraid. 

Mr. Hulman was noted for his strength of 
will. 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


III 

Fate had tossed to Bonshurst dulness two 
bones for gossip to pick clean and gnaw at in the 
manner to be observed in monotonous places. 
The announcement of the Mayor’s approaching 
marriage followed on expectation, and was a 
popular piece of news, with promise of a sightly 
ceremony, and perhaps some cakes and ale of 
rejoicing. But talk flowed most on the return of 
Mark Ruthway, which, besides being unlooked- 
for, brought with it an old story which many had 
forgotten, and many more had never heard of. 
Silas Wedge told it with the importance of a 
chief raconteur. It went the social round, rous- 
ing charity or prejudice in turn, and, here and 
there, in younger hearts, the feeling that makes 
romance. On the whole, there was a mixed 
kindness in Bonshurst for the inmate of Wedge’s 
cottage, which showed some tendency to become 
unanimous after the Mayor’s initiative in visiting 
him in person to sound the note of social for- 
giveness, and to offer, as an old friend, a new 
start in life. This offer, and its munificent 
terms, made fresh halo for the Mayor to shine in. 
He did so, coruscating pity. The poor man 


42 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


refused everything, said he ; would scarcely 
speak j a physical wreck ; mentally clouded ; a 
sad case ! a sad case ! The Mayor looked quite 
cut up, and even uneasy. 

His opinion became Bonshurst’s after some 
weeks were past, and Ruthway’s long figure and 
odd manner had become more familiar to it. 
He walked the town like the only man in it; 
seeing no one; noting nothing; heedless even 
of the greeting words or proffered hands of 
those who had remembered him and were not 
willing to be behind the Mayor in offering the 
grip of kindness. He seemed content to go his 
way, with far-off gaze or eyes bent low, so that 
people caught their glitter askantly. A silent, 
sombre figure, drawing various back-glances from 
those he passed, and causing here and there a 
young shrinking such as Dante made when he 
walked Florence fresh from Hades. The latter 
feeling grew, and made older heads foolish when 
the story had gone round that he had been seen 
crouching behind some furze-bushes near Burbury 
Copse, gazing steadily at the spot where the 
struggle had been as if, in imagination, he were 
witnessing it again. It was an odd thing to 
do, but that he had smiled as he walked away 
43 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


Silas Wedge would never believe. Smile at the 
memory of that — it wasn’t natural. 

‘ What isn’t natural, Silas ? ’ said the Mayor, 
meeting the old man as he went muttering along. 
And Silas, stopping to relate the story he had 
just heard at the ‘ Crown,’ and peering through 
his glasses at the face of his listener, thought 
how pallid it seemed — but it must have been a 
trick of the moon shining through a thin place in 
the clouds, for the Mayor laughed his pleasantest, 
and called it an idle tale. 

About this time Ruthway began to be seen 
less frequently, and it was noticed how haggard 
and feeble he was growing. But his interest, 
observed from the first, in all the public func- 
tions of the Mayor, still brought him forth at 
times to court sittings, or public meetings, and 
occasionally to church, where he would sit with 
his eyes on the one broad-shouldered figure 
which seemed to claim all his interest. Some- 
times, however, he would remain in the church- 
yard, reading the headstones, with fingerings here 
and there at some remembered name which may 
or may not have stirred regret — his face told 
nothing. But he liked most to hold on to the 
rails which enclosed one of the vaults, and there 
44 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


he would stand, listening to the organ and the 
chants and the softly sung hymns like one in a 
trance. Hardened and impassive as he was, it 
was scarcely conceivable that the sentiments 
roused by such simple sounds should move one 
to whom emotion seemed as dead as his lost 
youth. But who knows what memories came up 
from his past at the touch of those old melodies, 
so sweetly bitter, so like a wail, even in their 
joyousness, to those whose dead selves they raise 
only to let die again ? 

He was listening so one sunny October morn- 
ing, with face half-turned to the window nearest 
to him, when, like one startled back to the pres- 
ent, he raised his head suddenly, and looked 
round him dazedly. Carriage wheels had rolled 
up to the gate, and it was Lady Floxmore’s 
coachman who saw him stagger a few steps till he 
had reached a buttress, against which he sup- 
Ijorted himself. He pressed his hand over his 
eyes as a soft ^ Amen ’ came from the window ; 
and then, with a hoarse sound, like a cry stifled, 
he fell a tumbled heap on the grass. 

The organ played the church-goers into the 
sunlight, where they saw the coachman kneeling 
by the prostrate figure. He sent a helpless look 
45 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


towards them, and Miss Hulman hastened up to 
him, Silas limping at her heels. It was her first 
appearance at church since her return from 
abroad, and she was a favourite with many who 
had hoped for a greeting from her. But she and 
Lady Floxmore drove off with Mark Ruthway, 
leaving Bonshurst to go home, talking of the 
incident, and the news of a coming marriage, 
which made a certain date stand out, and the 
Mayor conspicuous by his absence that morning. 


IV 

Beatrice Hulman was one of those fresh, 
vital natures to whom some kind of social 
activity seems the law of their life ; and her 
age was that in which the woman was just 
beginning to temper and guide the girl — a 
changeful time, with odd alternations of mood 
and manner to mystify those who would read 
her, and nonplus even those who thought they 
knew her best. And so it was that no one 
could understand her sudden absorption in the 
case of Mark Ruthway. 

‘ Whatever can you find in the man to interest 
46 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


you so?’ yawned Lady Floxmore. ‘A dull, 
brooding misanthrope, without a word to say 
for himself. I asked him to tell me of his 
prison life — just to make some talk, you know; 
but all he could do was to give me an incom- 
prehensible look and say : You shall read it — 
you shall all read it.” His eyes made me 
shudder. A dreadful man ! ’ 

But Beatrice thought otherwise. 

Ruth way appealed to her strangely, touching 
her sentiment and sympathy at once ; and in 
her heart pity moved side by side with a kind of 
reverence for the man who, prison-marked as he 
was, had still a chivalrous connection with her 
mother’s memory. Ruthway tolerated rather 
than encouraged her visits. He lay on his 
horse- hair sofa in Wedge’s little parlour with 
his usual grim impassiveness, directing a closer 
glance now and again at her engaging face, but 
always coldly civil to her, and displaying neither 
gratitude nor resentment for her various devices 
to make his time less tedious, or for the dainty 
fruit-offerings which she smilingly uncovered to 
tempt the Adam in him. His manner pained 
her, because it seemed the sign of a soul 
numbed by what he had gone through. 

47 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


What had he not gone through all those bitter 
years? If she could only win him back to 
kindness ; restore to him some of the lost 
light and colour of life, some of its sweet 
humanness — if she only could ! Beatrice 
prayed it from the bottom of her heart. But 
Ruthway seemed only to repel and mortify her, 
and words she would fain have spoken faltered 
on her lips and refused to go farther. Her 
hope, however, bided with her, held by a single 
thread — his interest in the daily life of the 
Mayor. To anything touching this he would 
listen with a certain taciturn attention; and 
she would talk on in her ingenuous way, glad 
in herself to keep alive in him some possible 
kindness for his old friend, though puzzled 
not a little by the expression in his eyes as 
she spoke of her father’s worn appearance, of 
his restless nights, and the strange, hunted look 
which he had at times. 

‘ It seems so odd,’ she said one day, with 
a wistful glance out of the window. ^ But 
perhaps a little travel will do him good. They 
go to-morrow, immediately after the ceremony — 
but I do wish he were happier ! ’ 

The artless talk seemed to strike the listener. 

48 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


He turned a sinister look from some papers 
on his table and scanned her face. 

‘ These visits — does he know of them ? ’ 

‘ He has no idea I see you so often/ she 
answered, with some colour. ‘Your name 
seems to vex him for some reason, and I 

never mention it now. I come because " 

He looked up at her pause. 

‘ Because you — you loved my mother and 
befriended her.’ 

She saw his impatient movement. 

‘Why do you forbid me to mention her? 
She — no, no ! do let me speak ! ” cried 
Beatrice, impetuous at last. ‘ She mentioned 
you so often ; not to papa — she always avoided 
the subject with him — but she told me the story 
when I was quite young — of your harsh sentence, 
of your mother’s death ; and once — I remember 
it so well — she wept bitterly, saying she was the 
cause of your ruin — that she had been young 
and thoughtless, that she was cruel to you, and 
drove you to madness. Oftentimes since then 
I have thought of you, and wondered whether I 
should ever see you ; and now — oh, Mr. Ruth- 
way, I do wish I — your life is so lonely and em- 
bittered — it would make me so happy if ’ 

49 


4 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


With sudden fierceness Ruthway half rose, 
and waved her away. 

‘ Leave me ! ’ 

The hoarse words came like a blow. She 
stood up, and the hot tears came and half blinded 
her. He watched her, leaning on his elbow, the 
two evils beneath his brows glowering on her, 
yet half in fear. She could not trust herself to 
speak, but took her muff up silently and moved 
to the door ; she turned there, and what she 
would have said shone from under her wet lashes 
full upon him. He winced, and glanced away ; 
then fell back with a kind of moan, moving his 
head restlessly. Beatrice hesitated a moment, 
half afraid ; then, approaching him again, re- 
seated herself, and put her hand into his — a 
soft little pleader — and it was not thrust away. 
His long fingers closed on it, and there was a 
deep silence, broken only by Ruthway’s laboured 
breathing, as he wrestled inwardly with the some- 
thing she had roused there. She had no key to 
the struggle, and could only wonder naively how 
she had hurt him so. 

‘You are not angry with me?’ she said at last. 
‘ I won’t speak so again. I will even cease my 
visits, if you wish ; but I did so want you to feel 

50 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


that you had some one in the world who cared 
for you. It is not charity — no, no ! It is part 
of my happiness to wish yours — it is indeed. 
Papa, too, wants to help you, and Ed — Mr. 
Somerset. He is my — he loves me, and soon 
we are to be married ; but I should not be happy 
in knowing that you were still here, so uncared 
for and cut off from every one. Your life has 
been clouded ; I want to make its evening a 
little less — a little less drear — that is all.’ 

It was a faltering ending, and she was blushing 
rosy red. He had turned to her with an expres- 
sion she had never seen before, and was gazing 
at her as if he had found something in her face 
which fascinated him — and what was it in his 
eyes which made them so different? The girl’s 
heart beat fast in the silence, and she glanced 
again at him ; then, with a glad little cry, she 
slid from her chair to kneel beside him. Fie 
had drawn her hand and she had followed it, 
and now she gave her forehead to his gentle kiss, 
too glad to speak. 

‘ You love him ?’ 

The question startled her. Was it that, then, 
which had so altered him ? Beatrice felt fresh 
tears coming. 


51 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


^ Edgar? He is all the world to me.* 

The other face in hers held him fast. 

‘ It is because I know what love is,’ she went 
on with lowered eyes, ‘ that I speak to you as I 
do. I could not have borne what you have. If 
Edgar were taken from me I think I should die.’ 

Ruthway drew back with strange agitation. 

^ Leave me now, child,’ he said thickly. ‘We 
will talk again ; I want to be alone stay.’ 

He turned to her as if with a new thought. 

‘Tell Mr. Hulman that as soon as I am able 
I shall leave Bonshurst never to return. It was 
his suggestion that I should go abroad, and he 
might like to hear that I think well of the advice 
of such an old — friend.’ A flash of bitterness 
subsided to tender earnestness in his face, and 
he went on without noticing the protesting inter- 
ruption. ‘ But I shall be quite content, and even 
happy, if I can feel that this love which has come 
to you will remain with you always. I should 
know then that it is well with you ; that my — 
but where love is it is always well. Yes, yes ! 
Let love warm and sustain you, little one; let 
it be your gentle light through life, showing 
you its deepest meanings, its tenderest truths. 
And they will grow to you and become a part 

52 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


of you ; and so your life will seem a beau- 
tiful thing for the sweet harmony in it — that 
harmony which even sorrows enter to make it 
richer music. Nay, no tears, ’tis only my wish 
— only my wish.’ 

Long after she was gone he lay motionless, 
with his eyes turned to the papers on the table. 
The November twilight made them dimmer till 
they were a faint island in the darkness ; but still 
his gaze remained fixed upon them, and they 
seemed at last to draw him from the sofa to the 
chair by the table. He moved painfully, and 
his hand trembled as he struck a match and lit 
the small oil-lamp. By its light he looked 
through what he had written — what, indeed, he 
had been writing for many weeks. He put the 
bundle down, but his hands fingered the leaves 
half lovingly, and he turned again to a descrip- 
tion of his removal from one prison to another, 
and of the talk which had passed with the con- 
vict manacled to him. His lips tightened, and 
something of the old light glittered under his 
brows. He folded the sheets and addressed 
them to Rufus Hulman. 

‘This is the night, and it shall have at least 

53 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


one reader,’ he muttered. ‘ Am I doing well to 
spare him? Twenty-three years ! ’ 

He gazed into the fire bitterly, seeing in its 
red caves the remembered miseries of half 
a life. But the voice in his ears, the eyes 
that had looked into his, had touched some 
fountain of his past, and caused it to flow up 
and soften the hardness of years. The im- 
pression of an hour ago crept in among his 
images, and they slunk all away, leaving only the 
soft girl-face which had made his past young 
again, bridging Then with Now, so that all 
between was only a dark memory to be looked 
away from. He turned to the table and wrote 
some words on a slip of paper ; then, sealing the 
packet, he went out to Silas. 

V 

The night came still and frosty, with a faint 
mistiness in the air through which the stars 
gleamed palely. Anon some denser wreaths 
rolled up from the river and glided like air 
spirits through the deserted streets, then away 
down the vale — weird, silent things gaming 
in the night. Like the ' shapeless sights ’ that 
54 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


Prometheus saw, they came and went ; writhing 
across the churchyard ; hovering over the weir ; 
winding through Burbury Copse ; then climbing 
to peer in at the one lighted window at Sorrento, 
or lose themselves in the w'oods about to filter 
out where they might. And so all through the 
night hours, till the window opened and a dark 
figure stood on the terrace with white, scared 
face, as if he had been summoned there. The 
grey vapour wreathed by him to curl in at the 
window, and he turned his face to where a 
sound came through it, low and muffled ; then, 
as if still hearing some call, he walked unsteadily 
across the grass, and the mist things folded 
round him, and he was seen no more from 
the window. 

The dawn came, and fresh breezes, which 
cleared the keen air ; and the sun, peeping over 
the hill, stirred the slumberers of Bonshurst like 
ants in their nests. The millrhorn hooted ; the 
shops were unshuttered ; and the church doors 
were opened for the busy preparing for the 
event which was to make the bells peal that 
afternoon and clang out their merry ‘ for better 
for worse ’ through all the vale. 

Quite early Beatrice descended the hill, half- 

55 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


joyous, half-sad, for reason of mysteries which 
were strangely mixing up with the realities of 
life, making her wonder where truth was, and 
what it might mean. What had Silas brought 
last night? And what was the packet she bore 
now from her father? Gradually her thoughts 
centred on the man it was addressed to ; and 
thinking so brought gladness to her, which gave 
a brighter flash at Ruthway’s affectionate greet- 
ing. He appeared stronger, and had risen on 
her entrance ; but his old hardness returned 
as he read the Mayor’s letter, and Beatrice 
wondered anew. His head lowered as he 
finished, and without looking at her he asked 
how she had left Mr. Hulman. 

‘ He had not risen when I came away,’ said 
she. * I found the packet on the library table and 
brought it myself, wishing to see you again after 
— after yesterday.’ 

She put her hand into his, looking up at him. 

‘ My poor child ! ’ 

He drew her to him shelteringly, gazing back at 
the window, and listening to a sound which came 
nearer — the fast gallop of a horse. 

^ What is it ? What is the matter ? Why, it 
is Edgar ! ’ 


56 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


Somerset entered, and paused, with a white, 
troubled face, which brought another exclama- 
tion from the girl. Ruthway held up a hand for 
silence, and led Beatrice to him. 

‘ Sir, you know what your place is now. She 
would crave no other shelter, and she needs it 
to-day, with all your heart can give her.’ 

Beatrice clung to the young fellow, gazing at 
either face with fearsome inquiry. 

‘What is wrong, Edgar? Is he ill? Has 
something happened ? Oh, do speak ! ’ 

‘Something has happened. He has been 
found — can you be brave, little sweetheart?’ 

Her strength waved back,- but returned again, 
and gently he told her the rest, supporting her 
in his arms, and finally leading her off, stunned 
and tearless, to the fly which Silas had gone for. 

Drowned near Burbury Weir. 

Ruthway, left alone, thought of it grimly. He 
read the letter through once again ; then slowly 
he placed the whole bundle on the fire and 
watched it consume away. 

What the flames burnt was never known, nor 
what was seen from behind the furze-bushes on 
that winter’s day long ago. Only Mark Ruthway 
knew now, as he watched the writhing paper, 
57 


THE MAYOR OF BONSHURST 


that early peculations had placed Hulman in 
another man’s power, and that he had found 
that man struggling to his feet, and pressed him 
back into the silence that tells no tales. The 
poor horse-thief who had witnessed it, and who 
had believed all the while that the man whose 
conviction he had read of was the real criminal, 
was dead, and lay harmless in a prison grave. 
And here was the confession which his own 
forgiveness had wrung from remorse, a thing of 
dull ashes ! 

Ruthway sank down by the table. 

^She will never know,’ he muttered hoarsely; 
* and the world shall believe what it does of the 
Mayor of Bonshurst. Poor knave ! ’ 

When, some while later, the officers came to 
discover what they might of evidence to clear 
the mystery of the Mayor’s death, they found a 
heap of burnt papers, and Ruthway asleep in his 
chair. Silas shook him, calling his name, but 
there was no response. 

Mark Ruthway had left Bonshurst. 


58 


Under a Greenwood Tree 


I 

I KNOW now why it was that Churt Hawksley 
died at Kirton Lindsey, and am grateful enough 
for the impulse which prompted me to break 
my journey there yesterday to ask Tom Venables 
how it all was. It was not he who told me — 
the family proved to be away ; but as I was 
wandering about the park, having an hour to 
spare, I came unexpectedly across the story, 
lying ready in an old man’s heart for me to 
knock there and call it forth. I remembered 
Rickson the moment I saw the gables of his 
cottage through the trees, and turning aside to 
see if he might still be alive — for I had some 
kindly reminiscences of him — found him in his 
little mead feeding the pheasant-chicks. I 
hailed him — and pointing to the bench under 
the walnut, made for it myself and awaited him. 
59 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


He came up presently, his swart face crinkling 
with welcome. 

‘ Why, it must be eight years since you were 
this way before, sir,’ said he, seating himself 
beside me as I had motioned him to do. 

*Nine years next October, Rickson,’ I an- 
swered, warming under his glad stare. 

‘ Lord bless us ! how time flies. But now I 
call it to mind you were here last along with 
Mr. Hawksley, and it was that autumn that 
Alec 

^ Who was he, Rickson ? ’ I asked, curious at 
the conjunction. 

‘Yes, it’ll be nine years come October, and 
it was you that brought him. He was your 
friend, so to speak, rather than Squire’s — ’ 
turning to me again. 

‘ We were all at the same college together,’ I 
replied, wondering at his insistence on the point. 

‘ Ay, to be sure ; but he was not one for the 
young master to take to, though there might 
have been some show of good feeling between 
them. He was too quiet and thoughtful and 
fond of his own company was Mr. Hawksley. 
No, I associate him with you, sir, for it was you 
he came with, and I never see Alec without 
6o 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


thanking God for it, though it may seem a queer 
thing to say after all that’s come to her.’ 

I glanced quickly round at him. 

‘ For though she’s not so blithe as in the old 
days,’ he went on, ‘when she had such spring 
in her heel and was as full of sap as a withy in 
April, she’s as content in a serener way as ever 
she was ; and now and again the old spirit will 
leap out, just as it did this morning when she 
and young Hettie were frisking about that lawn 
of theirs like a pair of leverets : I stood and 
watched them from the spinny yonder. Aye, 
but there’s something in her eyes at times — and 
that piano of hers — I’ve listened to it on still 
nights, and it’s told me a thing or two. It 
might have been different — it might have been 
different.’ 

‘ You know something about it, then,’ I said, 
really interested now. ‘Tell it me, Rickson. 
Tell me of her : the rest will come. I have 
been away in India all these years, and till a few 
hours ago never learned that my old friend was 
not alive and well. Let me take back all the 
story.’ 

‘Yes, I do know something about it,’ replied 
Rickson as if he had only partly heard me — 

6i 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


^and of her too, for I have known Alec — or 
Mrs. Hawksley as I ought to call her, only it’s 
so against old habit — I’ve known Alec ever 
since she was no higher than these leggings, and 
when it took all her fist to hold a partridge egg. 
I remember it was when she gave me one which 
she had found in Beglow’s Flitch that I first 
saw her.’ 

‘ Start there and work upwards,’ I suggested, 
seeing his eyes fixed on the little figure and 
not disliking his pleasant garrulity — ^ I shall 
know her better if you will give me some of her 
history.’ 

‘ Quite so, sir,' he answered, seeming pleased 
at the invitation : ‘ and that’s just what I can do, 
though there’s them that might tell you more of 
it, and in a more taking way, maybe, than mine. 
But I doubt if any one, unless it be Mrs. Tasker, 
could take you farther back than that day when I 
first came across Alec in Beglow’s Flitch, as they 
call the field. I can see her now, up to her 
middle in dog daisies and buttercups, plucking 
the flowers to a tune she was singing about the 
ladybird. At the first blush I took her for some 
cottager’s child, and was stiffening my features 
and getting ready a sharp call to her — for she 
62 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


had no business there, you see — when she 
looked up from under her bonnet and made me 
feel as if I had stepped into a sunbeam. I had 
not long been appointed then, and her face was 
new to me, as mine must have been to her ; but 
she came up smiling, as if she had known me 
all her days, and out of a pocket, no bigger than 
a tit’s nest, she drew the partridge egg, asking 
me to look what she had found. But as she 
came along with me here, cheeping her name 
and other things, like the fledgling she was, I 
could see even then that she was born to fly free 
rather than hop through life in a cage, however 
they might gild it. For it all came fo turn on 
that, sir ; and fate, you see, was already making 
busy with her in teaching her to slip from her 
home for frisks round on her own account. The 
wife tried to show her the sin of it, but the child’s 
yellow head reminded her so of young Peggy 
that she could only find heart for kisses, thinking 
of her own again. 

‘ That was how we came to know Alec. At that 
time her father had not been dead above a year, 
and her mother was living in the cottage by the 
cross roads which her uncle, Captain Lovel, had 
taken some years before, and where Mr. Maitland 

63 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 

had gone to lodge when he first came to Kirton 
as the curate. Mrs. Maitland’s grief for his loss 
had worn down somewhat, and she seemed not 
unhappy with the child to look after, and the old 
captain, who was in his way another child too in 
the house, because of his age and infirmities. 
But she must have felt the pinch of loneliness at 
times for the lack of some one nearer her own 
age to talk to and make a friend of ; and it was 
because of that, maybe, that she and Marjory 
(who might have had a sprucer man than me if 
she ’d had a mind to) struck up a kind of friend- 
ship. For Marjory, you see, had taken Alec 
home, and had got talking about Peggy, and the 
two mothers, womanlike, came to crying and 
kissing, and ended up by walking back hand in 
hand as far as the spinny, like a pair of sisters. 
After that, Mrs. Maitland would walk over some- 
times bringing Alec with her, and as there was 
always a dish of tea for her, with a ready tongue 
for a chat, she would stay long enough on occa- 
sions for Alec to spy me through the trees and 
run laughing to meet me with her lips in the air 
for a greeting. And so from the very start she 
began to twine round me like woodbine round 
an ash pole ; and there was no resisting her, for 
64 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


she came like a whiff of Maytime, making life 
young again, to me and to Marjoty too, though 
she would draw a long breath sometimes, and 
take a long look over to the village, where Peggy 
was under an arm of the cedar tree. 

‘ But Mrs. Maitland, as we soon found out, 
was a weak little woman, without any will of her 
own, or power to keep in bounds a restless filly 
of a thing like Alec ; so that as she grew apace, 
the girl had pretty much her own way, and 
nothing pleased her so much as to run wild 
about the place here, either alone, stepping 
where fancy led her, or with my lad Hugh ; or 
with me, if she happened to catch sight of me 
on my rounds, and I could promise her not to 
shoot anything. But I couldn’t always promise 
her that, you see, because of the vermin about ; 
and as she hated to see even a stoat killed, she 
preferred most to run alone whenever the chance 
offered or she could make one. And as the 
Squire was in his minority at that time, and the 
estate was being nursed, there was no one to 
say nay to her, except Jephson the agent, and 
he would have only stopped to warn her of pit- 
falls, having a liking for her as we all had. She 
came to no hurt, however, beyond a tumble or 
5 65 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


two down the coombes and a bite from an old 
dog fox which she found asleep in a hedgerow 
and wanted to stroke as she would a kitten ; and 
so she grew up, straight and lithe as a little 
poplar, and showing promise in limb and feature 
of rare well-favouredness, if time did well by the 
framework. 

‘ But even then, sir, when she was all stalk, 
so to speak, there was that in her face and eyes 
which you never see in the ordinary lass of her 
age ; a something — I can’t very well put it in 
words ; but it made you look again at her and 
feel somehow that there was a soul in hiding 
there which her eyes knew of and allowed some- 
times to peep from them. I used to catch sight 
of it when the trees were saying things to the 
breezes, and where the brook found voice as it 
fell over the stones into the cool of the dingle, 
and in other like moments, and then I have said 
nothing, but just stood still, letting her walk on 
in her dream, and thinking she would like best 
to be alone with it. 

‘Mentioning that, brings me to the evening 
when my first fear for her came to me, though 
it seemed mighty foolish at the time. I was 
standing just inside the long coppice, having 
66 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


that minute found a couple of snares which 
wanted thinking of, when she passed along the 
marge of it with that far-away stare she had 
whenever her thoughts were out for an airing. 
She was coming back from Nanny Higson’s, as 
I knew by the white wicker thing in her hand, 
in which she often took some niceties such as 
sick folk are glad of ; and I was thinking that a 
drop of hare soup would not come amiss to 
Nanny, when a sweet sound of singing filtered 
through the trees and I stepped to the fence to 
see Alec on a rise a little away carolling like a 
bird that can’t help it. She had her face turned 
to where the sun had dipped a minute before, 
and as she stood in the light from the upper 
clouds, with the thin edge of the moon pushing 
through the blue beyond and an early star or 
two opening their eyes to look at her, I was 
feeling how her antheming fitted in with it all, 
when something moving on the left struck the 
corner of my eye, and I glanced round to see 
Jephson pulling up to watch her from his horse 
on the waggon track. 

‘ Now there was no more music in Jephson 
than there was in his hack, and seeing him there 
gave me somehow a brush of uneasiness and the 
67 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


queer thought along with it of a weasel watching 
a rabbit. He was a rough, coarse-grained lawyer 
of a man was Jephson, but good-hearted in his 
way, which was why he was so well liked by the 
people about, among them old Captain Lovel, 
whom he went sometimes to see. But I was not 
aware then how often he had been there of late, 
or how much he had won of Alec's good-feeling ; 
so that when I saw her turn down from the 
knoll, and him push his horse to the point she 
was making for, I wondered at first what would 
happen, and then at what did happen. 

‘ For seeing him on a sudden, the lass gave a 
glad sort of hail and went tripping to meet him, 
while he slid to the ground to await her, beaming 
as an old friend might, and holding his free hand 
to welcome her. She gave him hers with a 
bright upward look which ought to have been 
enough for any man ; but seeing how fresh her 
lips were he drew her to him, stooping for a 
closer greeting. For the shortest of seconds 
Alec held back, but being of an obliging turn she 
was lifting a cheek with a flush on it when my 
gun went off, and Jephson was jerked sharply 
away by the plunging of his horse. Alec shrank 
aside, glancing in a frightened way’ at him and 
68 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


at me by turns ; but affecting not to see them, 
I walked away as if for a hawk 1 had shot 
at, and the end of it was that they went off 
together, parting when they came to the lane 
with a hand-shake and no more. 

* Well, that was a trivial thing enough, and if 
the man had gone quietly away instead of fling- 
ing off at an angry gallop, I might have paid 
little more heed to it ; as it was, I came back 
here with my thoughts going like bees in a hive. 
There was no use blinking it — Alec was put- 
ting away childish things, and Jephson had seen 
how prettily she was doing it. But perhaps I ’m 
tiring you, sir ; it all comes back to me so.’ 

I begged of him to go on, and he looked 
away for a minute, and then resumed. 

II 

‘ Now that I ’ve told you the beginnings of 
it all — the first hints of consequence, so to 
speak — I may as well skip two or three years, 
and bring you down to a morning in August 
when Alec sat just where you are now, telling 
me why she was abroad so early. But let me 
first say what happened during that time to 
69 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


darken her days so, and make her bend at 
the last for such a spring at liberty. 

* When Captain Lovel died, and Mrs. Maitland 
found herself alone in the world with her child, 
she looked at the prospect and then at her 
mirror, and, seeing in it a still comely little 
widow, she took heart, and received her con- 
dolence visitors with an eye of hope on the 
chances of life. Now among her callers was 
Colonel Tasker, brother to the Rector, who 
had leased Springbank on the hill there, and 
was himself a widower on the young side of 
fifty, and not ill-favoured if looked at with 
proper kindness. And I daresay Mrs. Maitland 
felt some of the kindness which fellow-feeling 
nurses when the Colonel, along with his sym- 
pathies, dropped a seedling hint or two that 
he also was lonely in the world. Anyway, the 
day dawned — and not so very long afterwards 
— when the little lady came this far, and, 
between the sips of her tea, told Marjory a 
blushing tale. 

Mn due time they were married, and Alec 
had to leave the old home by the cross roads 
to share the new one along with the two sisters 
which the law had given her, and under the 
70 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


strict rule of the governess they had — a maiden 
lady of the name of Peplow, but as hard as a 
gun-barrel and as hollow of all proper feeling. 

* Is it to be wondered at, sir, that the girl 
was miserable ; that she was like a swift in a 
cage, a whippet in a box? If her life had been 
less unfettered, if she hadn’t got such wild, free 
ways of her own, it might have been easier 
for her ; and perhaps her mother saw, or was 
made to see — for Miss Peplow virtually ruled 
the place — that she had been acting too softly 
by her child, and that a strong hand must 
be used if she was to be shaped and moulded 
into a Miss Alexandra of the proper society 
brand. 

‘That was all very well, but to my thinking 
they didn’t go the right way about it. They 
roped her in too suddenly; they ought to have 
cut more with the grain of her nature ; they 
should have seen that, though she was still a 
sapling, she had had time to harden a bit, and 
was not all bark and pith like a hazel twig. 
There she was, however, bound head and heels 
with rules and conventions, with precepts flying 
about her like small shot ; and so eternally 
leashed with the two Tasker girls that I used 

71 


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to think it was like training a hare by making 
it run with lop rabbits. 

‘ But, as the man says in the play, there’s 
good in everything if you only keep an open 
eye for it ; and Alec was certainly learning 
more of knowledge and accomplishments proper 
to her station than ever her mother could have 
given her in the old easy days. I tried to put it 
that way to her once or twice when she shot 
down here, as she would sometimes, before 
discipline was awake, and she could steal a 
run in the open with an early whiff from the 
pine woods. But, remembering the way she 
took it, with what she said of her life at the 
place, I can’t marvel now that she should think 
so well of a man who pleaded there for her; 
who whispered sympathy in her ear and squeezed 
it at her hand ; who wormed his way by a 
thousand little tricks of tongue and eye into 
the depths of her affections, if not of her 
love; and who, when the time was ripe for it, 
held a hoop for her to jump through — for 
that’s what he did, though it was no larger 
than her taper finger. Yet it restored to her 
some part of her liberty, and she sat here that 
morning flushed with the first taste of it. 

72 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 

‘ I stopped by the rails there — she had been 
waiting while I finished feeding the ferrets — 
and watched her a moment or two ; for I 
had not seen her for some weeks, and there 
was a difference which wanted looking at. She 
had taken her hat off, and was leaning her 
head back against the trunk, gazing away to 
the downs there at the brave pictures she was 
throwing on them as on a screen. Her profile 
showed up against the dun of the tree clear as 
a cameo, and there was that about it which 
made me think of Atalanta, who, as they say, 
had a touch of boy-beauty along with the 
maid’s. That, however, was not so much part 
of the difference, because I had seen it before ; 
but I had never seen Alec as a young lady 
before, and there she was with her hair tied 
up and her serge gown lengthened out, showing 
only the tip of her shoe and its gaiter. 

‘ I came quietly forward, feeling an awkward- 
ness all about me which I had never known 
before. I can’t explain it to you, but you’ll 
understand what I mean if you have ever felt all 
that is best in you kneel down, so to speak, 
before the white mystery of maidenhood. That 
was what Alec had brought with her, making the 
73 


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air like that of a church, and me ready to dofif 
my hat without quite knowing the reason for it ; 
and it was just that feeling that made me say, 
“Yes, Miss,” as she looked up and saw me, 
speaking my name. I might just as well have 
struck her, so pained did she look. 

‘“Oh, Rickson, why did you say that?” 
said she. 

‘ I shuffled a foot, feeling some lack of words 
on the instant ; then, looking again at her, my 
eyes slid from hers to the thick hair-coils which 
crowned her, and she jumped to what she 
thought was the why of it with a ripple of 
laughing. Then, before I could blink twice, 
her hands had gone to her head, and her hair 
came down with a shake and a tumble, and 
there was the old Alec in a pheasant-brown 
framing, smiling up at me. 

‘ “ Now what is my name ? ” said she. 

‘And I told her, saying just the word, and 
half guessing why she clung to it so now that 
even her mother called her Alexandra like 
the rest of them. But I was still uneasy, 
seeing how she let the sound rest in her ears, 
her face shadowed a bit, as if she had turned 
from some light ahead of her for a glance 
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UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


at what was behind. Then she breathed some- 
thing away, and, facing about again, as it were, 
began to tell me of where she had been since 
sunrise, turning tlie while the jewelled thing 
on her finger which I had noticed at first 
as a detail of her altered appearance. I may 
have wondered a little at the sight of it, as 
I had at such sun in her features; but now 
as she went on I seemed to lose the power 
of seeing. For she was telling me the why 
and the wherefore of the blithe morning she 
was having, and it was hard to hear her words 
dance round Jephson’s name in that way. But 
I took it in as best I could — how it had all 
been settled with her people ; how it was to 
come off when she was turned seventeen in 
October; how devoted he was to her, and 
how fond she was of him ; and how happy 
they would be at the Stennies, and so on ; till 
she came to a sudden halt, as if something had 
dropped in her way. 

‘^‘But tell me, Rickson,” said she, ‘‘what is 
love really; is it — is it — ” and then she 
stopped, perhaps as much to stare at me as 
for want of words to fit her meaning. For the 
question had given a last flick to my anger, 
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and I bad turned suddenly away to hide the 
twist in my features which it made. I stooped 
to pick up some night lines near by, then tried 
to look as usual when I fronted her again. 
What could I say ? There was her face as 
innocent of passion as a baby’s — what words 
of mine could tell her what love was? I said 
as much to her — I had to say something, 
you see — but I was thinking hard behind the 
words till I had shaped a resolve which sent 
just enough of a smile to my face to make her 
feel that I was as pleased as she was. And so, 
as I was telling her that we see life through a 
gauze curtain till love rings it up, and that we 
never know what our souls are till love’s heart- 
beats have drummed them into wakefulness, 
and the like of that in the sprucest words I 
could pick, I was deciding in my own mind 
that the marriage should never come off ; that 
if I had to shoot the man, I would do it rather 
than have Alec carried to the altar like a falcon 
hooded. 

* So I felt as gay as could be, and so did 
she, believing as she did that she had got a 
good half of love and that the rest would come 
all in good time. Then seeing Marjory beaming 

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in the frame of the door we went in, and Alec 
took a cup of coffee, while I told the news, 
noticing that she didn’t redden once. But 
Marjory had caught my eye, and putting a 
good face upon it rolled up the girl’s hair 
with a subtle changing of manner to that of 
woman to woman ; while Hugh came in all 
arms and legs with sheepishness. Then, odd 
to say, the next thing I saw was a silver line 
or two over Marjory’s ear as she stood in the 
doorway waving a hand of parting. They were 
the first stars of life’s evening, and Alec’s going 
had made them visible. 

‘ Well, sir, that was how things were when 
a few days later you and Mr. Hawksley came 
down for the shooting. I had seen you before, 
of course, but Mr. Hawksley was new to me, 
and I must say that I took to him at once, 
though I don’t suppose we spoke a dozen 
words together, nor perhaps did I see him 
half as many times. He didn’t seem to care 
for the battue shooting; nothing pleased him 
better than to slip off for a little quiet sport 
on his own account, taking with him one of the 
beaters, if he could be spared, but as often as 
not going quite alone, as content with an idle 
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gun as a busy one. He was a man for 
nature’s solitudes, all ear and eye for what she 
had to give him ; yes, and it was by the fall 
in the dingle, sir, where the brook speaks out 
in passing, that he and Alec first looked into 
each other’s eyes, and then away again while 
the curtain went up. 

‘Ah, I wish to heaven I had known of it in 
time — aye, and I’ll wish it to the end of my 
days, let her say what she will. 

‘ But, you see, I didn’t know of it ; and she 
never spoke, nor Hugh, and for the time being 
it was all a mystery to me, and remained one 
till it was too late to move a finger for them.’ 

Ill 

‘ But that’ll make you understand why it was 
that when I saw her again I felt some shaking 
of purpose, with a feeling that, poor as the 
well was, it was best left alone. It was not 
often I saw her during those weeks, for we 
had a goodish party down that year, and me 
and the men had our hands pretty full, as you 
may remember. But I had seen something 
of Jephson, and had noticed how softened his 

78 


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face was and gentle his ways to what they had 
used to be, and I had begun to think less 
ill of the man because it did seem that he 
really cared for the girl, and that she was, 
perhaps, the one genuine love of his life, which, 
had it come to him earlier, might have made 
a difference in him and spared some of the 
queer oats he had sown. I was as innocent 
then as the Squire was of the full extent of 
his sowing, or that it was to fall to Kempson, 
the timber dealer, to start the reaping for him ; 
I was just trying to keep an open heart, and 
to remember that if you can’t make a silk purse 
out of a sow’s ear, love can make a man out 
of clay if it beams from above him, and his 
soul must grow in stature to reach it. 

^Such was my thought one morning, and I 
was wishing with all my heart that Alec was 
over head and ears in love instead of only 
ankle deep in it, when getting on to the lane 
which winds from the Stennies to Springbank, 
I heard wheels behind me, and, turning, saw 
it was Mrs. Tasker and Alec in the pony 
carriage. They pulled up alongside me, and 
I was feeling a brush of old days at hearing 
the little woman’s voice again, when 1 caught 
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Alec’s smile, and looked so long at it that 
she reddened a bit and stooped to speak to 
Gyp, who had put his paws on the step and 
was wagging good-feeling to her. Then they 
went on, leaving their remembrances to Marjory, 
which I carried to her with the news that Alec 
was in the toils at last. 

‘ It was true, sir, though I don’t believe now 
that the girl knew what had come to her any 
more than a flower does when the sun is first 
opening it. It was her eyes that had shown it 
most, for they had that old look in them as when 
her spirit and nature’s had used to join hands 
for awhile — the old look, but with something 
else with it which had given a fresh touch to her 
lips and had got into her voice, though Gyp, 
maybe, had not noted it. But there was the 
fact, and for days and days I wondered at it, 
never once dreaming of the truth, or that it 
would prove such a heart-aching thing when she 
herself awoke to it. 

‘That was after their parting in the coombe 
that evening when Hugh was there and saw 
them. How many times they had come across 
each other I don’t know ; perhaps never once 
with intent to meet, and then only changing 
8o 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


glances and some few words, perhaps, which his 
first startling of her at the dingle might have 
opened the way to. But they had met that 
afternoon on the downs, and, seeing the storm 
coming, Alec had taken him to the old hut in 
the coombe bottom, which Hugh had made for 
too, being near by at the time. Hearing their 
voices, however, and being a bit shy by nature, 
he sheltered under the lee of the shed, and came 
in, without wanting it, for a share of their talk, 
which was about some rare plants Mr. Hawksley 
had found, and of which, Hugh said, he seemed 
a bit proud. 

‘ Now a man can talk with his tongue about 
botany and with his eyes about something else, 
and I doubt not that for every look Mr. Hawksley 
gave to his plants he looked twice at the soft 
blue things under Alec’s lashes. It may have 
been for that reason that before the storm cloud 
had passed, and while the skirts of it were still 
dripping, Alec came out saying in a shaky sort 
of way that she thought it was fine enough now 
to be stepping on again. All the same, they 
lingered there a trifle longer, admiring the sky 
beauties, which he was pointing out and holding 
her by as if he were loth to quit the place. But 

6 8i 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 

they did move away in a minute or two, though 
they went no farther than a dozen yards. For 
there, overcome perhaps by the tale her face was 
telling, and feeling, like enough, that he was the 
hero in it, he took her hand in his and began a 
gentle pleading that it might be always so. She 
gave a start and stared like a frightened doe ; for 
he was given sudden name to all her own vague 
stirrings, and the blood must have rushed to her 
heart and back again before she could pull her- 
self free and shrink trembling from him to tell 
him how it was with her. 

‘ It was a hard thing to say, but she got the 
words out bravely ; and when she had done she 
asked him to leave her, and never think again of 
her, or seek to see her more. And being a 
gentleman, he did leave her then and there, and 
next day had left Kirton Lindsey. Hugh said 
that he spoke not a word, but, seeing how firm 
she stood, just gave her a last look, and with a 
lift of his hat went off down the coombe. Alec 
stood watching him, holding on to a bough 
which she had clutched when he had turned 
from her ; and when he was quite gone she 
raised the hand which had been in his and kissed 
it ; then she let it fall, and looked again down 
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the vacant path. At that, somehow, all the 
pluck seemed to leave her ; she sank down on 
the bank and had a hearty good cry. 

‘ That was a sight to make Hugh’s eyes smart ; 
but feeling some touch of guilt for having been 
present at so much private matter, and that it 
would only pain her to know of it, he crept off 
under cover of her sobbing to come whistling 
through the coombe again, as if he had just 
arrived there. He meant it kindly, and he had 
a way of blowing out “ Come lasses and lads ” fit 
to make care itself do the footing. So, taking 
his time, and piping as prettily as a throstle after 
a storm, he came in sight of her walking quietly 
away while the breeze might dry her trouble ; 
and when she came to the stile she stopped to 
await the lad and ask how my sciatica was. Her 
bit of veil was down, but her lips were clear, and 
the smiles playing about them made Hugh think 
she had seen a rainbow at the edge of her storm. 

* But it was only the beginning of the play 
that followed, which Hugh alone among us could 
guess the proper name of. For putting this and 
that together, as well as his years would let him, 
he couldn’t see how it was in human nature for 
a girl to dance as she was doing into a marriage 

83 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


with the wrong man. And he made a shrewd 
guess that, though a heart may be as heavy as 
two, it might be made to seem as light as a 
coney’s in May, once despair has made it reck- 
less. So he looked on with a still tongue, and 
he was the only one in Kirton who didn’t 
feel the pull of the stream she made. For it 
was to be a fine wedding, and all the village was 
to have holiday, with good ale and cakes, and 
sports in the park to shake them down. So that 
every one had a kind thought for the thing, with 
a kinder one for Alec, whose blithe way of 
carrying herself had won even Miss Peplow. 

‘And just because it was all so natural that 
the girl should be so, no one had eyes for the 
change in her face — the loss of its roundness 
and colour — that it was becoming the face of a 
grown woman suffering. I heard nothing of it, 
and the distant glimpses I caught of her, once 
at the Hockley cub hunt and again on the Bur- 
cot road, had given me no inkling of her secret 
any more than Jephson’s supposed absence in 
London had of his. She never came near here ; 
indeed, I don’t think she went out quite alone 
once in the time, having a fear, maybe, of her 
own company. But when the day came when 
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all Kirton was ringing with the news of the 
embezzlements, I found her sitting by herself in 
the dingle, as if she had gone there to mourn 
of it. 

‘ I had not been so close to her since that day 
in the lane, and, not being ready for the change 
I saw in her, I was stepping back to get over the 
shock of it, and with some feeling that it was no 
place of mine to break in on a grief like that, 
when some twigs snapped under me, and she 
sprang up, scared-like, looking me full in the 
eyes without seeming to know me. Then, hear- 
ing my voice, for I could but beg pardon, she 
ran to me all at once, forcing such a quick 
change on her poor face that I felt my eyes ache 
to see it. I could do nothing but stand and 
stare, trying to make such gaiety fit in with the 
ruth behind it, when all in a second its meaning 
dawned to me, and, scarce knowing that I did 
it, I caught her by the arm and looked close at 
her. She flushed up, as well she might at such 
rudeness ; but there was a fluttering, caught look 
in her eyes, and by the light of it I read out the 
truth. 

“ Why, Alec ! ” I said — and that was all I 
could say for the moment from wonder at what 

8s 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


I could see — the love she was throbbing with, 
and that not a beat of it was for Jephson. And 
there she was, still acting her part, as ignorant 
of the news, or that she was a free woman again, 
as her ring was that its time was up. But just 
then, and while my words were still in her ears, 
something seemed to give way with her — and 
she was turning from my hold to hide what her 
eyes were filling with, when, to stop the flow of 
it by a stroke of surprise, I pulled the bauble 
from her finger and then offered it back to her. 

^ “ Shall you throw it away, Alec ? or will you 
give it to the parson for the poor box?” said I. 

Throw it away! What can you mean, 
Rickson?” said she, with her eyes round as 
shillings ; “ it’s my engagement ring.” 

* Then I gave her a look which she couldn’t 
quite make out, and she put her hand on my 
arm to have a closer view of it. 

‘ “ What is it, Rickson ? Has anything hap- 
pened to — to Mr. Jephson?” 

‘ “ He’s only gone for a change of air, Alec,” 
said I, not liking to give the spade its name all 
at once. “ He thought a voyage might do him 
good, you see.” 

* “ Change of air — a voyage 1 ” 

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‘ It was all she could say ; and, seeing how 
she was trembling, I let her hold on to my arm, 
while I dropped the rest into the little shell 
thing she had for an ear. 

* “ And perhaps it will do him good, Alec ; 
for the Squire will get over his anger, and in 
a new country the man can make a fresh start 
and keep clear of crooked ways if there’s any 
straightness left in him. It was over some little 
mistake two years ago in the measurements of 
the Copley timber, and some other matters. 
They’ve been scenting it down some time, it 
seems ; but the warrant was only issued yester- 
day which made you a free woman, Alec.” 

‘ Sometimes, sir, when I pass the dingle and 
hear the soft tumble of the water, I fancy I can 
hear the girl’s sobbing as I held her to me dur- 
ing those minutes. Sometimes, too, I can see 
the same dight in her eyes which they had when 
she stood free from me to look away to where 
the trees parted to show the sunshine. It was 
as if it was some golden gate to her, with some 
one standing there beckoning her to come and 
enter; for she gave me a gentle pull, and we 
both moved to the place to stand together in 
the light, she taking long breaths of it, and look- 

87 


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ing round at things with eyes that made me 
think of violas after April rain. Then she gave 
a little twist, like a lamb that feels the sun in it, 
and, turning my arm round her neck, looked up 
from the cup of my shoulder, laughing like a 
pleased child. I was blinking down at it when 
up came her lips, and she went skipping away, 
leaving me tingling with the kiss she had given 
me. And when I got home Marjory, instead of 
being jealous, only came closer to taste what 
was left of it. 

‘“And, Jem,” said she, “ I know who it is — 
it’s the new curate ! ” 

‘ But it wasn’t ; and if I had only known so at 
the time, or Hugh had kept his knowledge less 
buttoned up, things might have had a different 
issue. For that was when Mr. Hawksley was 
still free, and in his first heedlessness as to what 
might chance now that honour forbade him 
almost to think of her. But, as I said before, it 
was a mystery to me, and continued to be till 
that December night when I was reading out ta 
Marjory the account of the marriage, and Hugh 
jumped up saying it was a lie. Then the lad’s 
angry face, and a word or two more he let fall, 
brought it to me like a gunflash. 

88 


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^ I don’t know that I need stay to tell you how 
she took it — for I found means to tell her only 
the next day, choosing some talk on the Squire’s 
betrothal as a highway to it without her suspect- 
ing the motive. It was a black enough cloud to 
come between the sun and her ; but she found a 
silver lining, and made that give her light to live 
in. It changed her, though ; her step lost much 
of its spring, and her eyes the dance that was in 
them, while her few smiles would remind me of 
, Marjory’s after we had lost our little wench and 
she didn’t want to seem too down about it. She 
was staying at the Rectory that winter, doing 
little kindnesses to the sick parson, which made 
him take to her later on when the Taskers gave 
up Springbank to go to Warwickshire ; but as 
often as she could she would come out into the 
open to seek the little altar-places she had, 
where she and' nature were most alone together. 
— away among the aisles of the woods, or retired 
alcoves in the coombes, where the aconites were 
beginning to light their candles, and white choirs 
of snowdrops to chant things to her, which, 
having a ready ear for, she would take to heart 
and make a solace of. She never spoke of it, 
but she had a large-eyed way of looking at me, 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


as if she could have unveiled her little dead hope 
just to show me that she had one. But she kept 
it to herself, feeling shy of it, even with me ; and 
as the spring blew along she turned a brave front 
to it ; and, catching something of its keynote, 
made with the few memories she had some tune 
of her own, which we grew content to listen to 
behind her gentle speaking and tenderness of 
way.’ 

IV 

Well, sir, time went along, dealing more or 
less kindly with us all ; and some two years or 
more must have passed when I was sitting here 
one evening having a quiet pipe after the heat 
of the day, and watching the changing tints the 
sun made as it burnt itself out behind the 
downs. It was a fair sight, and I could keep a 
quiet eye on it, as well as feel the gentle stir of 
thoughts which the shag was making. So, while 
I was watching a horseman rise slowly out of the 
blaze and pull up on the ridge there to look 
down on Kirton, I was looking in at other things 
and wondering how Jephson liked his new life 
on the pampas, and then of what might have 
happened to Mr. Hawksley. The ridge was 

90 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


clear again, and I brought up Alec’s face as I 
had seen it that afternoon shining on the young 
things about her ; then, thought I, what a merry 
time the children were still having. It was the 
annual school treat, you see, and the happy 
sound of it was just coming to an end, though it 
seemed not in the usual way. For I could hear 
faint individual shouts spreading to right and 
left, and, turning rny best ear to the breeze, 
made them out at last as “ Hettie Druce ! Hettie 
Druce ! ” 

‘Now I had seen a little figure move along 
by the larches and disappear down the dip be- 
yond, some minutes ago, and, looking at the 
spot now, caught a glimpse of white slimness 
going in the same direction ; and by the grace 
of its gait I knew it was Alec. She stood to 
look round from the vantage of the rise, then 
went on over the brim of the hollow. The 
child, as it proved, was contented enough, and 
was whiling away pleasant minutes with a big 
companion she had found. Alec drew up be- 
hind a blackthorn to have a good look at him. 
He was seated on the butt of a tree, with the 
youngster between his knees, and smiling com- 
fortably at her, while a rise and fall of talk went 

91 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


on, such as a grown man and a child might 
pass together once they feel quite sure of each 
other. 

‘ ‘‘ And do you give your Hettie sixpences 
too ? ” the little one was saying. 

‘ “ No, hardly. She never falls into gorse 
bushes, you see. Moreover, she might swallow 
them.’^ 

‘ I was running away from you. No one 
ever comes down here hardly, and you frightened 
me.” 

‘ “ I was merely having a quiet look round, 
Hettie.” 

‘ But your eyes were so strange ; then when 
I told you about Miss Maitland I was afraid 
again. Does the heat often make you like 
that, sir?” 

‘ “ But I am all right again now, Hettie. 
The ride across the downs had overtired me, 
perhaps.” 

‘ “ Were you going through the park ? ” 

^ “ No, little questioner ; I was just having 
a last peep at old scenes I learned to like once 
on a time. Long, long ago, Hettie — it seems 
like twenty years — I had something given to 
me hereabouts which I set great store by, as 
92 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 

you do by this silver sixpence. And, though I 
went up and down the world trying to spend 
it, I found I could never do so, and decided 
at last to keep it always. So I came back to 
where it was given me, thinking it would grow 
more beautiful there because of the light other 
days would throw upon it. And since I came 
I have learned from a little fairy that, though 
I have done well to come, I will do better to 
go away again for the giver’s sake who has 
made me so rich. That’s how it is, Hettie.” 

^ “ And won’t you ever come again ? ” 

‘ “ Well, once I start on my journey I can’t 
very well, you see.” 

* Are you going soon? ” 

‘ No, there’s no hurry. The little man 
in spectacles gave me six months to get ready 
in.” 

‘ “ Will you take Hettie ? ” 

‘ “ No ; I hardly think Hettie would care for 
it. She had nearly started one day by water, 
but didn’t seem to like it at all. I was glad I 
was there to stop her, though it has cost me 
a great deal, as the little man in spectacles said 
when he put part of it in his pocket. Heigho 
for lungs and guineas ! ” 

93 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


Hettie will stay with her mother, then, till 
you come back? ” 

‘ Her mother is dead. But come, child, I 
think you had better be getting back to your 
friends. Miss Maitland will be angry with you 
for deserting her revels so long. Give me a kiss 
and then run.” 

‘ But Hettie, staying to deny that Miss 
Maitland ever did get angry, earned another 
sixpence, and then was made to promise never 
to tell any one whom she had met that evening, 
and that if she was asked about the coins, to 
say a lover of little children gave them to her 
to dry the tears the thorn-bush made. 

‘He watched. the child scramble up the bank 
and disappear. The air was so still that iie might 
have heard the heart-beats behind the black- 
thorn, where Alec was crouching, dumb with 
the mingled joy and the pain of it. He had 
been true to her from the first; his foreign 
marriage had been only his way of trying to 
forget her. It had failed him, and there he 
was, a dozen yards away, making up his mind 
never to see her again ! 

‘ “ She has been free all the time, Churt,’^ 
she heard him say as he rose to his feet, “ and 
94 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


you have only been playing honour’s fool. 
And now that you know it, what have you to 
offer her but bittersweet ? Time has dealt kindly 
with her, and will again. Take yourself away, 
then, and let her happiness shine on. It^s no 
part of your duty to wave a dead hand across 
that.” 

‘ Now that was a hard saying for Alec to 
listen to and remain where she was ; but, what 
with the strain of maidenly commotion, and the 
deadening fear of losing him for good and all, 
she watched him walk away, her feet refusing 
to stir and her tongue to shape a sound. But 
she forced herself after him somehow ; and he 
had nearly reached his horse at the wicket 
when he suddenly turned and saw her close 
upon him, with her poor lips apart fot the cry 
which refused to come. Well, it was hard to 
stop, being so near, and his eyes saying the 
kindest things, and his arms getting ready to 
save her falling ; so what could she do but just 
let herself go, and find a good pillow for her 
head to rest on while she got rid of the first 
flow of feeling? 

‘ Alec left out a good deal of what followed, 
which was only natural. But when she came 
- 95 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


to relate the story to me — for she had to brim 
'over, you see, feeling too small to hold it all — 
I saw then how it was ; how her heart, having 
thriven on next to nothing, was become rich 
beyond all its imaginings in merely knowing 
that its mate had been leal to it. 

‘Yes, sir; and even on that February 
morning when we all woke up to find the 
white blinds of the Rectory keeping the sun- 
light from what was behind them, even then 
she had to come forth for one of her old turns 
before she could quite measure all that had 
happened to her. She may have had her 
little cries here and there in the corners, but 
they only cleared her eyes better to see the 
snowdrops. They hung their heads, but to 
her then they were only so many tiny white 
bells for fancy to ring a peal on, for she was 
kissing the gold band on her finger, remembering 
who had put it there at dawn that morning, and 
that he lay at the Rectory looking more content 
than any one in Kirton. 

‘ There she lives now, with a large faith in 
the issue of things, and a brave eye for the 
sunny side of even a cloud. And what with 
the memories she has, and her devotion to 
96 


UNDER A GREENWOOD TREE 


Hettie and the old Rector, her life seems full 
enough, and I daresay she wishes the world no 
bigger than it is at Kirton Lindsey. 

‘That’s how it was,’ added Rickson, rising 
to his feet ; ‘ and I have told you it openly, 
because I think you had some right to know 
it, having set it all going by bringing Mr. 
Hawksley for the shooting that autumn. And 
now, if you’ll step indoors and take a 
taste of Marjory’s sloe wine, she’ll count it 
an honour, and so will I. This way, sir, but 
mind those nets. Hugh ought to have shifted 
them, but, bless the lad ! his wits are all wool- 
gathering now he’s taken up with that lass of 
Kempson’s.’ 


7 


97 


The Squire’s Amanuensis 


I 

The Squire could not see her properly, which 
rather vexed him ; but his blue glasses had 
shown her height, and something of her manner, 
and she had answered his questions as to her 
journey, the drive from the station, etc. in a 
pleasing voice, as he had been careful to notice. 
And now that the first commonplaces were over 
he looked away, and there was a little pause. 
Of what his impressions were his set features 
told nothing ; his visor was down, and when he 
spoke it was as if from under it. 

‘Your duties will be very simple, Miss 
Carston. Two or three hours’ writing each 
morning, followed by a scanning of the 
“ 'rimes ” before luncheon for such news as 
I think may interest me. In the afternoons 
some book-reading, and on occasions a little 
98 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

in the evening ; for as you may have gathered 
I am something of a recluse, and my unfor- 
tunate weakness of sight, which makes me 
chary of overtiring it, will render me very 
dependent upon you for some hours daily.’ 

‘ 1 shall be most happy ’ 

‘ The rest of the time you may consider your 
own,’ pursued the Squire. ‘The place will be 
strange to you for a time, and you will feel a 
little lonely perhaps since you can scarcely mix 
with the servants. However, my housekeeper, 
Mrs. Benson, is a companionable person, and 
you will take your meals with her in her quarters. 
If you are fond of walking, this is pleasant 
country, and whenever you prefer a quiet read 
the library is at your service. That is all, and 
now as you will be tired after your travelling, I 
will ring for Hodgetts, and he will show you to 

Mrs. or perhaps I had better introduce 

you myself.’ 

Which he did, and with a relaxing of his 
sternness of aspect, which brought a grateful 
light to Miss Carston’s eyes, as she bowed 
herself out. The Squire, however, saw nothing 
of it ; and his face stiffened again as he drew to 
him the Baskerville quarto he had been reading. 
99 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


But the thread of his interest was broken, and he 
pushed the book away to stare at the window 
musingly. 

So he had sat on an afternoon a few days ago, 
busy with the first thoughts which, in their issue, 
had brought to him this new-comer. The rector 
had just left, and a young man had entered the 
room and resumed his audible reading of the 
book which lay open on a rest near by. The 
Squire, instead of listening, had only recalled the 
old minister’s story of his riding accident and of 
his finding in Miss Weyman, the village school- 
mistress, such a capital amanuensis. But he 
had turned at last to the figure beside him, 
furrowing his brows the better to see him. 
Angular, leaden-featured, harsh of voice — why 
ever had he chosen such a man ? Why had he 
gone to that sex at all for his other eye and 
hand? Women were quicker; they had more 
intuition, they caught a man’s meaning from the 
handle of a word ; their voices were softer, more 
flexible to an author’s meaning ; they were light- 
footed, too, moved with a glide, were noiseless 
in their comings and goings, reasoned he, 
throwing himself impatiently back again. But 
to find the right person, some one owning all 


lOO 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

these excellences and willing to use them for the 
comfort of his days — he feared it was impossible, 
and somewhat testily he -had told the reader he 
might go. But Mr. Bilson’s heavy stepping 
had made an ornament rattle, and the Squire’s 
new idea, finding more fretfulness to thrive in, 
had come in the course of minutes to a head of 
purpose. 

And now, thought he, had he chosen well? 
Would this young woman learn his ways quickly, 
bear with his occasional hastiness, and so on? 
It was all uncertain, and perhaps he had done 
better to have had another man — they were not 
all Bilsons. He turned to his quarto wearily. 
But there was something restful in the large type, 
and his eyes following it took him agreeably on, 
till he had wandered quite away, and seemed 
well content with his journeying. 

A good book is a gate out of the present, 
which such men are willing to pass through ; it 
is a way of escape from the gnat-bites of 
common things, no less than from the stings 
of outrageous fortune. For Antony Chalton 
was not always the recluse he is. Even years 
agq^ when steadied by one small hand which 
nestled in his, he had stood by the vault in 


lOI 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


Otway Church, a widower, he had taken heart 
of grace, finding still some light to live in, some 
future to grow to. He remained an altered 
man, it is true, but the years that followed were 
not so full of ruth as to leave such markings as 
are on his placid face now. There are lines 
there, hard, self-repressive creases, which tell 
a tale of their own, and there are old servitors 
at the Hall who will spell it out for you. And 
they will begin with the time, four years ago, 
when in the small hours of a morning, Simmonds, 
the lodge-keeper, was roused to open the gates 
and let the ‘young master’ forth, he and his 
horse, to plunge into the darkness, none knew 
whither. Since then the Squire’s work on the 
‘ Italian Republics ’ has made great progress. 

Something of this Mrs. Benson is relating over 
a dish of tea in her sitting-room, and Miss 
Carston is her listener, an absorbed listener, for 
she is young, and there is in the story a young 
Chalton who has suddenly left home — and for 
why ? The bare facts are beaters to start whole 
covies of conjectures, which Mrs. Benson knows 
full well, and pauses to sip her tea in the proud 
enjoyment of the truth of things. But as she 
goes on in a sadder key to speak of the Squire’s 


102 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


daily life now, the listener looks away, as if at 
the solitary figure in the library there, and her 
face too is clouded. For it is not a cheering 
account of a man who, in his day, would follow 
the hounds, or shoot the coverts, or go for his 
canter on the heath like the rest of the world. 
‘ But that was before his illness, which affected 
his sight so, and in Master Hubert’s day ; 

now ’ and Mrs. Benson passed on, bringing 

in presently Mr. Bilson and his failure, and the 
Squire’s losses of temper, till the stranger ought 
to have shown the concern of an untried 
successor. But the relation seemed only to 
brighten her, and to bring the light again to her 
eyes, which were soon rippling like blue lakelets 
which see the sun again. 

Might she not, by a faithful- discharge of her 
duties, bring some small pleasure to him ? And 
was she not sure that she could do all required 
of her, aftd do it well? Mr. Bilson, failing in 
that, had irked and annoyed him ; but it would 
not be so now, and that would be something, 
said she so eagerly that the old lady smiled, 
shaking her head in token of what a small thing 
that something was. 

Mrs. Benson, though well in years, and show- 
103 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


ing some of the downward bend of overripeness, 
was still green at the heart. Taking the stranger 
round the mansion, and yielding to the subtle 
influence which the girl threw off, she showed 
that in her face and manner which the other 
may not have noticed, as she glanced on this 
side and that, or paused for a longer gaze at 
some ancestral portrait, but which, to the grave 
eyes in the pictures, may have looked like buds 
which push from a tree in autumn. Flattered 
by a listener who hung on every word, the good 
lady told pithy anecdote and story of the dead 
Chakons around them, and with every glance at 
the face beside her she felt the desire to glance 
again, and not without some mild surprise. For 
the young girl, whom she had deemed only 
pretty, had grown strikingly beautiful. She 
seemed taller, her head was more upright, her 
lips had a prouder curve, her eyes a livelier 
flash. Half amused at such a result o^- her mar- 
tial narration, Mrs. Benson turned at the window 
to look down the pictured vista, and then again 
at her companion. She too was looking back, 
half over her shoulder, and standing stock still. 
Every Chakon in the gallery was regarding her ; 
she looked a queen at the end of a line of ad- 
104 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

miring courtiers. Yes, she was undoubtedly 
beautiful. 

Mrs. Benson coughed. The sound struck the 
other like a small missile ; she started slightly ; 
breathed something away, and contracted to her 
former self. As she moved quietly to the 
window, she might have been an ordinary visitor 
pleased with the view. 

They went through the wainscoted corridors, 
with passing peeps into faded stateliness, and 
once into a melancholy little boudoir, where the 
old lady’s voice lowered to a whisper, as if some 
one were there ; then down the great staircase 
into the hall, with its armours and trophies and 
Gozzoli windows, and finally back to where they 
started from. There the stranger expressed 
afresh her delight to be in such a dear old house ; 
then, turning impulsively to her guide, she 
added : * And oh, I am so happy, Mrs. Benson ! 
Will you let me kiss you?’ 

II 

After the probation of a month, the new 
amanuensis had every reason to be satisfied. 
The wheels of the Squire’s life had never worked 

105 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


with less creak or jar. A calm had fallen on 
his days, and he enjoyed the serenity so dear to 
the scholar. With womanly deftness, she had 
made her aid almost unfelt by its very smooth- 
ness ; she had made the Squire forget that she 
was there at all. Indeed, he had never had 
cause to be more content, and it was all her do- 
ing, and she ought to have rejoiced. But and 
but 

One evening she stood at the drawing-room 
window, looking across to the moon, round and 
clear, over the distant trees. A tiny moon 
shone in each of her eyes as if in still water, for 
they were moist ; and, judging by the way she 
was torturing her lips, she had much ado to keep 
tears back. What was the matter!^ She had 
just been dismissed with a ‘ Thank you ; that 
will do.’ 

She had learnt with the days that she was 
little more to her master than his book-rest, or 
the reading-lamp at his elbow. That she did 
everything to his wish gave him the same satis- 
faction a nib would which ran without splutter 
or scratch. She was a needful automaton to 
him, to be summoned or dismissed as he would 
take up or put down pen or book. She was that 
io6 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

to him and no more. The thought was a heavy 
one, and much carrying of it lately had wearied 
her and affected her spirits. She wanted more 
than the negative satisfaction of never being 
grumbled at. A kindly smile sometimes, or a 
word of warmer thanks, were these at least not 
due to her? 

But the moon is a true peacemaker. Miss 
Carston became very still ; the tristesse left her, 
and she fell to brighter musing. Across the 
silence came a single sound, the voice of a 
nightingale — a solitary singing under the stars, 
which somehow reminded her of the Italian she 
had been reading. How beautiful that meeting 
of Dante and Casella, and that song for old 
time’s sake which the very spirits around had 
drawn near to hearken to ! ‘ Love that dis- 

courses in my thoughts ! ’ It seemed the bird’s 
song too, and that Earth was listening with 
hushed breathing, thinking of the Sun ; that 
Cynthia beamed a softer light, remembering the 
Carian. She drew a long breath, showing ten- 
derer depths in her own eyes ; and then, as she 
stood at the open window, some melody, which 
had long lain silent within her, stirred and awoke 
and started a faint tuning in her brain which 
107 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


seemed to rouse her strangely. A tremor went 
through her, and, hardly knowing what she did, 
she let the song free. 

It was a quiet, simple thing — a thought of 
Schumann’s — and it struck the air, not with a 
splash to send long sound-waves widening to 
the distance, but with a low velvety murmur 
which a resting deer might cock ears to and fall 
asleep again. But there was danger in it, for 
floating this way and that it entered in at the 
library window, and hovered about the white- 
headed figure at the table till the Squire heard 
it away in Genoa, and came back of a sudden, 
and with a startled aspect. He listened a sec- 
ond as if in doubt, then sprang to his feet and 
stood still as a statue, till a louder crescendo 
turned his attention to the window, when his 
blanched features set again, and he sat down 
with a vigorous ^ Pshaw ! ’ 

But not to read. He leaned back and let the 
melody come, for he had not heard it for twenty 
years, and another voice had sung it then ; and 
it reminded him. So he would have put it, but 
he seemed very agitated ; and as he sat on, ‘ see- 
ing with his ears,’ like Lear, seeing one by one all 
the dead memories, the shades of the past, which 
io8 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


uprose, as it were, to the Casella-like summons, 
something crept down from under his glasses, 
while his chest rose with some emotion, which 
he forced suddenly back. Then quietly enough 
he rose and closed the window. 

The song ceased, and the Squire, reseating 
himself, tried to get back to Genoa. But a 
shadow dogged him singing — a slim womanly 
figure in the fashion of years ago, which he tried 
not to see, but did all the while, and the love 
lights were in her eyes. 

He rose and paced to and fro for some min- 
utes, stopping at last in front of a closed cabinet 
of carved oak, which hung at one end of the 
apartment. He unlocked the doors, and they 
swung back, showing a painting of a mother and 
child. He drew a step nearer, and looked 
closely at it. It was a striking picture, and he 
had not seen it these four ye^rs. 

III. 

And the next morning. Had the tide of 
emotion ebbed, leaving no watermark? Look- 
ing at the Squire it was hard to say. He sat 
back, with his notes in his hand, his books of 
109 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


reference all about him, and wearing his usual 
air of abstraction as he delivered his long Rob- 
ertsonian sentences, with pauses here and there 
to refer to an authority when his memory hesi- 
tated as to some fact or date. Yet there seemed 
some small difference, as if, like the cabinet yon- 
der, he had only been gently closed instead of 
firmly locked again. 

The amanuensis sat as usual, quite still, letting 
her hands trace the words which flowed across 
to her like a good automaton. But here, again, 
there was difference. The little Mercury paper- 
weight watched her on tip-toe — there was no 
doubt about it. Her hand was unsteady, her 
face flushed, her lips slightly apart, and her eyes, 
as she glanced across now and again to the stern 
dictator, had the sun in them. And when, at 
the end of the morning’s work, she read out, as 
she was required to do, what had been written, 
her voice quavered, so that even the listener ap- 
peared to notice it, and he glanced over to her, 
though without annoyance. 

Indeed, he almost smiled. It was curious - 
how a few words of commendation would affect 
a willing servant. But he had said no more 
than was her due. She was helpful to him — 


no 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

extremely helpful, and as she was likely to be 
at the Hall some time, and had musical gifts, 
it would be no great favour to have the piano 
seen to, that she might use it sometimes for 
her own pleasure. It would make her feel 
more at home — more at home. And as Hodg- 
etts brought in the ‘ Times,’ which was a late 
arrival at Otway, he thanked him quite genially. 

The day’s skimmings of the world’s doings 
was a little relaxation the Squire liked before 
his midday meal. Perhaps Miss Carston did 
also, for she always took up the paper with 
some eagerness, as she did this morning. It 
was a relief to get away from the strife of Blacks 
and Whites, of Germans and popes, and all 
the mediaeval dimness, to the broad daylight of 
present things ; and, moreover, that was a stir- 
ring time, for there were living blacks and whites 
at war in Egypt, and all the world was looking 
on. Even Squire Chalton had shown some 
feeble interest in the spectacle; and Miss 
Carston, hearing a deep ‘ Read, please,’ after 
giving out the heading proceeded to go over 
the latest telegrams. But her voice grew so 
unsteady now that her auditor frowned. It 
was becoming too tiresome. 


Ill 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


‘ Pray go on ! ’ said he, as she faltered to a 
halt in the middle of a skirmish. He looked 
round irritably, seeing dimly that she had risen 
to her feet, the paper in , one hand, the other 
clutching the chair. He was about to speak 
again, when her figure swayed, and then, with 
a thick, sob-like sound, she fell quite down, 
and so remained without moving. The Squire 
pulled at the bell and knelt by her in some 
alarm. A glance told him that she had only 
fainted ; but when Hodgetts was gone for Mrs. 
Benson, and he was chafing one hand, scarce 
knowing what better to do, he bent for a closer 
look at her, then suddenly drew back. The 
blue eyes had opened full upon him. 

‘Are you better?’ said- he, in the gentlest 
fashion. 

She made no answer, but the blood hurried 
back to her features, and he felt the hand 
pulling for freedom. Retaining it in his, he 
raised her with his other arm, supporting her 
to a chair. But seeing Mrs. Benson enter at 
that moment, the girl stood free, and the two 
met midway — the one in a flood of tears, the 
other soothing her and assisting her gently from 
the room. 


1 12 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


Now, to a man like Squire Chalton, who 
had sailed into the trade winds of life, and 
whose habits liked a peaceful course, a puff of 
the unexpected such as this was disturbing. 
Like the reminiscent breeze of last night, it 
had caught him unawares, making him feel 
ruffled and a little distressed, though he forgot 
to be fretful, thinking, as he was, of the face he 
had seen. To the Squire his amanuensis had 
been a somewhat shadowy person. Nearer 
glimpses of her at times may have prepared 
him for some such discovery as that he had 
made ; but so far she had remained undefined 
to him, and, indeed, almost hidden behind the 
duties which connected her with him. A few 
hours ago, however, she had started the worn 
loom of his memory, making the old threads 
weave the old pictures, and leaving at the last a 
new strain of her own which he felt vaguely would 
always be there, since the night itself had passed 
into the subjective, and herself was part of it. 

So he passed up and down conscious of 
inner changings, and rather restless under them. 
He had been alone in that great house, its 
people had moved in the mist; they were 
shapes gliding about him, vague puppets of his 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


will — that and no more. But now he felt no 
longer alone ; he was beginning to feel the warm, 
pulsating presence of another life, and, somehow, 
it was not disagreeable. 

How like a pleased child she had been all 
the morning ! His few words had been as new 
wine to her. But to go off like that — the cause 
and effect hardly fitted ; it seemed a bit odd. 
Here the light patch on the carpet fathered a 
thought on him. Perhaps the paper would 
explain matters. He picked the sheet up, sat 
down, and after some close searching found the 
skirmish again. It proved to be an affair of 
outposts, and appeared to sufficiently explain 
what had happened. But merely muttering 
‘ Poor girl ! some relation no doubt,’ he read on 
with gathering interest, till he gave a start him- 
self, which, lingering in his hands, made the 
sheet tremble so, that it fell at last to the ground, 
and the Squire sat back gripping the chair-arms, 
as if a stray shot had hit him. 

IV 

As we may tell from a quadrant the size of a 
circle, let us return to Otway Hall on a day six 

IT4 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

weeks later, and try to gather what has passed in 
the meanwhile. The old place and its green 
setting appear much the same, save for some 
shabbiness in leafy places to show where time 
has rubbed hardest ; but summer fragrance is in 
the air, which the Squire is ‘ taking ’ this even- 
ing on the long western terrace. It is the doc- 
tor’s order. There is nothing much the matter, 
but for a fortnight or more his energy has gone, 
leaving him heavy and listless, and altogether 
out of heart with things. He looks so now as 
he leans on the arm of his amanuensis, and be- 
side her supple straightness his figure shows 
something of the crook of age. It was different 
a fortnight ago, and Miss Carston, sighing at the 
thought, glances again at him and essays to 
speak; but she is a little nervous and has to 
try again. 

^No, Marie; no — not now,’ answered the 
Squire, turning about. 

^I wish you would, sir; you know why I 
ask.’ 

‘ If I tell you it will not alter matters. Your 
feeling is natural and does you honour, but in 
no sense need you fear that you are taking his 
place. You don’t understand, child.’ 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


* Tell me — if you had not received that letter 
from Cairo would you — would you have asked 
me in the sudden way you did to be a daughter 
to you?’ 

* It was merely its expression which appeared 
sudden,’ replied the Squire, frowning. ^ I had 
felt drawn to you for some time, as I would 
to any one who had served me so devotedly. 
Since the death of young Carston in the act of 
saving my son, you have naturally been much in 
my thoughts in another respect. Your absence 
from here, following that event, helped me to 
realise all you were to me, to measure you by 
the gap you had left. I was like an old build- 
ing, which, having felt the support of a stanchion, 
had had it suddenly withdrawn. I had spoken 
of it that day because, in trying to imagine what 
my life would be without you, I had to turn from 
the prospect and ask you never to leave me at 
all. You are my solace, Marie, my one solace.’ 

‘ It makes me so happy to think it,’ said the 
girl, flushing at the confession ; ‘ but if your son 
were here ’ 

‘ It is impossible,’ he returned, annoyed at her 
persistence ; ‘ it is impossible. He declines to 

come near unless I received his — his ’ 

1 16 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

‘His wife?' 

‘ Exactly ! ’ flared the Squire, touched to the 
quick by the word — ‘ his wife ; his adventuress ; 
his parlour-maid, or governess, or whatever she 
was ! She lost him his degree, ’ he went on, 
whipping himself hotter; ‘she lured him from 
his studies, ran away with him, married him, boy 
as he was ! He came here for forgiveness ; not 
liking the terms, he insulted me — he defied me 
— he, my own son ! Having done that he went 
off to his beggar’s life — his love in a cottage, 
selling his brains for paltry guineas, like the low- 
est penny-a-liner — and he a Chalton ! But 
hark you ! In a soft moment, hearing of his 
bravery out there as war correspondent — it was 
the first time I had heard of him for years — I 
offered him an income, a handsome income, ask- 
ing him only to come sometimes with the boy. 
I wanted to see the child. I might have taken 
to it. But he refused everything; he would 
earn his own living ; he would brook no slight 
to his — his ' 

The Squire stopped and shrank in again, a 
trifle shamefaced. It may have been a relief to 
let it out in that way, but he would rather have 
done it in the wood yonder, with only the squir- 

117 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


rels for listeners. His arm still shook on that of 
his companion, whose eyes were wet, and yet 
seemed to have some gladness in them, as if she 
had reason to be easier now in the new position 
she had. 

‘ Let us go in ; I am tiring you,’ said the 
Squire, after a calming pause. ‘ And, Marie> 
you will not allude again to the matter I have 
been speaking of? Promise me.’ 

She assented, and they entered by the open 
window into the drawing-room. 

‘ Shall I play to you ? ’ said she, leaning over 
him as he sat down, and seeing how weary 
he looked in the half light. ‘ Let me be your 
David.’ 

To have spoken so an hour since would have 
been a liberty, but that was a long while ago. 
The Squire smiled pleasantly ; he liked that 
low-voiced sign of a closer bond. 

‘ God bless you, child ! Yes, you may play ; 
and then we might have a little more Schiller.’ 

He settled back to listen to the nocturne — 
a faded old piece which the player had taken 
from the ormolu case in the corner, of which he 
had given her the key one day. What she 
had unlocked then she never knew. She had 

ii8 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

played on with reverent touch, thinking of the 
eyes which had last read the dotted pages, and 
feeling somehow that she was not quite alone 
in the room. But, unwittingly, she had set the 
Squire’s keys jingling at many a keyhole. Bolts 
had clicked and creaked which had forgotten 
what keys were like ; it was so long since they 
had felt the touch of one ; jewels had blinked, 
dazzled with new daylight ; necklaces had felt 
the warmth of flesh again, so long were they 
dangled ; old gloves, veils, kerchiefs, and what 
not, had breathed fresh air after scented dur- 
ance ; and once a child’s tiny sock had felt two 
fingers in it, as though a pixie had thrust his 
legs there, wondering where they had got to. 
But the keys had been turned again, and the 
Squire had shaken off these little weaknesses, or 
thought he had. He looked severe enough now 
between his chair-arms, as if he were reviewing 
a march past of brighter thoughts, and was well 
pleased with their stepping. As the last notes 
died away, and the player came up to him, he 
took her hand as she stood. 

‘ You will never leave me, Marie ? ’ 

She leaned over his chair from behind with 
an expression he ought to have seen, or her 
119 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 

moment’s silence would not have disturbed 
him. 

‘Why should I leave you?’ said she gently, 
observing the trouble. ‘My own parents are 
dead; my only sister who keeps on the old 
home is thinking of joining a foreign mission ; 
and I — oh, I wish I could tell you why I am so 
glad to be here, and settled here ! No, I shall 
never want to leave the Hall. I want to be 
your little handmaid always.’ 

‘But this grief for the young officer, your 
cousin, will pass away, and you ’ 

‘ Oh, don’t let us speak of that — don’t, 
please ! ’ 

She started up, flushing to the temples. 

‘ I meant no hurt, child — pardon mej ’ 

‘ No, I know ; but if I could only tell you ! 
Shall I ring for the lights?’ 

‘ I meant no hurt,’ he went on, ‘ but I have 
been thinking, Marie, that your new status here, 
taken along with your distant connection with 
the Carstons of Bearsley, which, socially speak- 
ing, is a fact which quite discounts the humble 
position your father held as a teacher of lan- 
guages ; I have been thinking — excuse my 
pursuing the matter — that the possibility of 


120 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


a closer companionship in life than I can give 

you is one that ought ’ He paused, feeling 

-himself on delicate ground. 

But the young girl, whose distress of feature 
had passed into an amused smile, made soft 
answer almost in his ear. 

^I could be happy with no husband who 
would take me away from here and the duties 
I have learned to love so. You don’t compre- 
hend my feelings ; but how can you ? I will 
tell you some day, and then you will know me 
better.’ 

The Squire was too pleased with this answer to 
follow on with immediate comment, and during 
the little lull of words a carriage wheeled into 
their consciousness, and they both looked up 
together. Miss Carston rose • and went to 
the window, the Squire looking after her 
questioningly. 

It was the fly from Bareham, she reported, 
adding, a second later, that it contained a lady 
and gentleman. The Squire, watching her dark 
figure, saw it bend nearer the pane, for as the 
vehicle drew closer. Miss Carston became 
strangely interested. Visitors were so rare at 
the Hall. Who could these be? 


121 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


They were more visible now, though still 
shadowy in the dusky light, and there was 
something else with them. Was it a child? 
Here the Squire saw the watcher behave as 
if some one had struck her. He saw her sink 
to her’ seat, and that her face fronted him and 
the window by turns. He tried to question her, 
but could not. Her manner was thundering it 
at him. She sent a final clap, looking at him 
steadily. 

‘There is a little boy with them.’ 

She knew it was all she need say. But the 
wheels had stopped, and the dead silence that 
followed was too trying. She rose quickly. 

‘ I had better leave you, sir ; he will be here 
in a moment, and you will like to be alone to 
receive him.’ 

His face was painful to see, and full of strange 
distress herself, she turned to go, but seeing the 
door open she changed her mind, and fell on 
her knees beside the Squire, clasping his hand 
and holding it tight in hers, while she strained 
her eyes to see the tall figure which, appearing 
from behind Hodgetts, slowly approached them ; 
they both started at the sound of a deep 
voice : 


122 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


* Father ! ’ 

The girl, taking quick nervous glances at 
either face, crept closer to the Squire. 

‘You will never let me leave you?' she half 
implored. ‘ You will not be angry with me? I — • 
oh, was it right, after all? Hubert ! Hubert ! ’ 

With a swift turn she flung her arms out to 
the stranger, who lifted her in his, and there 
they stood like Posthumus and Imogen, while 
the Squire rose to his feet, looking on like a 
man in a dream. 

‘ You little witch, you have outwitted us 
both ! ’ he heard Hubert say between two sibilant 
sounds ; then floating on a laugh came the 
hearty words : 

‘ For love’s sake end it, sir ! You have 
adopted my wife ! ’ 

It had been her own impulse ; she had been 
the cause of the feud, and had ended it in her 
own way. Adopting her mother’s family name, 
and securing her sister’s help for forwarding 
letters and caring for little Tony, she had 
stooped to conquer, and now pleaded forgive- 
ness. That was irresistible. Hubert, returning 
before his time, and discovering the plot without 
warning, allowed his anger to melt into quiet 
123 


THE SQUIRE’S AMANUENSIS 


laughter. The Squire, on his side, had been too 
gently fooled to do much else. His joy carried 
himself and all before it, and he tossed for days 
on the blithe stream to find his feet again in a 
fairer country, a small boy leading him. He 
had two amanuenses thenceforth, both sisters, and 
he had no fear of losing either of them now that 
he knew which of them was the chief mourner 
of Lieutenant Carston. But they had so little 
to do, these attendants on a scholar, that, find- 
ing Mrs. Benson crying one day at a bass sound 
of men’s laughter, they made room in the victoria 
and took her for a long drive. 

‘ The Italian Republics’ is still unfinished. 


124 


Connie 


I 

It is true they are long and lonesome, these 
winter nights ; and if, after three or four pages 
of a book — for longer reading seems but collar 
work now — and a musing pipe or two, I find 
myself looking round at the empty places with a 
kind of shiver at the chill of them, it seems only 
natural, since no man can glow at a fireless 
grate, or bask in sunbeams after dusk. It is not 
because I am discontented, or out of heart with 
the set of things ; for they have fallen out, I 
doubt not; just as the Lord planned them at the 
start, and it is not for me to say they had been 
better this way or that, since I am not in the 
secret of His workings, but only a simple man 
with a hopeful eye on the drift of them. But, 
as I was saying, the nights are long, and the still 
vacancy of the room presses hard upon me unless 

125 


CONNIE 


I can fall back on memories, and weave myself 
some warmth from the threads of them. And 
when such is my resource, as it often is, I find 
my thoughts running most on Connie, and the 
events which befell us quite lately, which, in 
their end, landed her where she is, and Seth too, 
who lives in her light. Because, for one thing, 
the happening of it is still fresh upon me, and, 
for another, there is enough of a story in the 
incidents, which, besides making me to dwell 
upon them for their own sake, have given me 
the thought once or twice of putting them down 
in black and white, just to see the look of the 
writing as a thing outside me, like a painter’s 
picture which has gone through his brushes to 
the canvas. 

But when I take up the pen to make a start, 
and thought feels about for the right point to 
flow from, it seems that I must go back on time 
to when Connie and I began life together to 
really find it. And it was on those days, 1 
remember, that I fell with a sort of slipping, 
when I sat here that night listening to her piano- 
playing, and realising with an inward aching, 
such as I had rarely known, that I was to lose 
her who had been all I had to live for — to pray 
126 


CONNIE 


and strive for — my Connie. She had spoken 
nothing, but it had glinted in her eyes, and 
played at her lips, and tremored in her voice for 
a week or more ; and there it was in her rapt 
face then as she traced her way through the 
Lieder^ searching their hearts out for hers to 
feed on ; it was the sweet love-hunger and 
nought else, and it sat winsome upon her ; yet 
jealousy and fear were all I had for it. It was 
selfish and unreasoning, as I knew at the back 
of my head all the while ; but it was not till I 
had gone back on the years and felt their soften- 
ing, that shame came upon me. 

When Phyllis died, leaving me Connie, she 
left a little jury mast, so to speak, to clear me of 
the reefs of affliction and bring me to calmer 
waters. I found myself in them, hardly knowing 
how it had happened, or why clinging arms 
about me, and a soft child face against mine 
should bring such healing, and give me eyes to 
see the sun again as it slanted down on the 
yellow head, and showed me Phyllis ten years 
old. I held the child back to trace what I had 
noticed many a time before, but which came 
home to me then like a spring lay across a dirge. 
Numbed feeling awoke, and thought pushed out 
127 


CONNIE 


to feel a future beyond all the dolour — a new 
life with Connie in it — yes, and Phyllis too, 
since her memory would thread it through, mak- 
ing past and future one, and in love’s own name. 
I drew the little fairy to me and kissed her 
gently; and she, as if guessing what had hap- 
pened — for I had been no better than a man 
dazed so far — only clung closer, and so we re- 
mained for some minutes, content with silence, 
while sorrow knitted the bond between us, and 
the blessed sun shone in and made light again. 

Yes, that was how it was, and the years that 
followed made as sweet a song without words as 
any in her book. And so, as I was dwelling on 
them, letting their memories come just as they 
would, I found they were stepping time to the 
music she was playing, and that, somehow, I was 
seeing them by the light of the dream she was 
in. Then, in among them, and quite naturally 
it seemed, came vague hopes and wishes ; and 
by-and-by, such was the changing, I was half 
praying that it was all true, and that, come what 
would to me, she might take love’s good hand 
and enter the life of fuller melody she was busy 
with the prelude of. 


128 


CONNIE 


Some deep-toned chords rolled forth to 
meet the very thought; then she stood up, 
and, breathing away a long sigh, gave me a full- 
eyed but vacant look, as if she were not all back 
again. The death-rattle of the hour at that 
moment seemed to rouse her, and as the clock 
began its striking she came up and gave me the 
good-night kiss without more than the word. 
But I held her hand, looking up at her : 

‘ Who is it, Connie ? ’ 

She gave a quick start, reddening to the 
temples, and asked what I meant ; but her voice 
was shaky and she looked away, pulling for free- 
dom. Seeing how it was, and that she was all in 
a white and red confusion, from which words 
would come but lamely, I let her go, content for 
the moment to have shown that I saw how the 
wind sat. She walked a step or two away and 
stopped ; then, all at once she was back again, 
and her arms came round me from behind, and 
her ‘face rubbed against mine like a kitten’s. 

‘ Oh, dad ! ’ said she. 

* Ay, Connie,’ said I. 

‘ How did you find it out? ’ 

^ You’ve been telling me for days, lassie.’ 

‘ And I thought it was my secret — my very 
9 129 


CONNIE 


own, to look in at and treasure and tell no one, 

not even you, dear, till ’ 

‘ But your heart told your eyes, and how 
could they hide the light that was in them? 
And you’ve been sighing it to every breeze, 
and they, like enough, have told all Warbury. 
You’ve been a kindled lamp, lass, trying not to 
shine. A fine secret — a fine secret ! ’ 

‘ You speak half bitterly.’ 

^ My treasure, there’s not a man within a 
day’s ride fit to hold a stirrup to you,’ said I, 
falling back on old feeling. 

‘Not — not Seth Marston ? ’ 

‘ Seth ? — is it young Seth ? ’ 

‘ Yes ’ — as shyly as could be. 

‘ But you never seemed ’ 

‘ No, but somehow it was different then, dad ; 
we had grown up together from little ones ; and 
we never thought — no, it was not the same, and 

Seth says ’ 

‘ Ay, what does Seth say ? ’ 

‘ He says that till he went away he never 
knew me, that till he lost sight of me he never 
really saw me.’ 

‘ Because some one stood ’twixt him and the 
light, maybe.’ 


CONNIE 


^ Do you mean Mona Grayson ? But they 
were only friends, dad — Seth says so — and 
they scarcely ever meet now. No, it was of me 
he thought — me, Connie Harding ! ’ 

‘ He’s made a clean breast of it then ? ’ I 
went on, beginning to catch her humour. 

* N — no ; that is — Oh, how can I tell 
you ? ’ 

‘But you are sure ’ 

‘ Yes ! ’ And she slid to the door, from where 
she sent me such a bright-eyed look that it got 
inside me and made brightness there too. 

To say the truth I had not thought of young 
Marston in casting up Connie’s possible suitors ; 
but as I reviewed our talk, which I give just as 
it happened, the idea of an alliance with the 
Marston family drew round it many thoughts, 
which between them built up a big hope that 
since I must sooner or later lose Connie she 
might go to a fine young fellow like Seth. 
In due time, too, the freehold would be his, 
and Connie would be mistress of a brave old 
house, and the bearer of a name as honoured 
as any in the country. They would not be far 
away, and, some day, when winter was on me, 
whitening the peak of my stature and harden- 


31 


CONNIE 


ing me to the stiffness of age, I might sell the 
farm and go there too, and let my life set where 
no bats of loneliness were, but only fond hearts 
and Connie’s soft hand to hold as I slipped off 
at the last to join Phyllis. So I pulled at my 
pipe and built cloud-capped towers out of 
Connie’s own quarry. And what was she up- 
rearing? Was it fair to surmise, to pry even 
in guesswork into the white mystery that was 
stirring within her, the something which even 
she could only spell out with four letters and 
marvel, maybe, that they should sum such a 
world? 

The days went by with even step, but what 
time was doing for them both I could only con- 
jecture. Seth called round sometimes with a 
manner no more than neighbourly, but love-shy 
beneath it all, as eye could well see ; while 
Connie grew over-fond of Raby Wood, which 
was just across the long meadow and abutted 
on the Marstons’ land. But nothing was said, 
so I let things go, quietly waiting, and gather- 
ing what I might from Connie’s, ingenuousness 
— for she could no more hide a humour than 
her fish bowl could hide the creatures in it. 

132 


CONNIE 


Her moods were pretty even, however; she 
was rarely gay and light-of-heart, as had been 
her wont ; but there was a quiet sunniness in 
her eyes, and a happy melancholy, if I may so 
call it, in her voice, which told me what it was 
that was ripening her beauty and showing up 
the woman through the maiden, like a warm 
day-dawn paling the moonlight. 

Could Seth gaze on her and doubt his choice ? 
The question started up in me one day on 
overhearing some gossip among the haymakers. 
Was the lad only whiffling after all ? or was he 
no better than a piece of tinder to take fire at 
the flash of every maiden-eye. But Mona was 
his cousin, I argued, and there could be no 
great harm in their being together sometimes, 
only that she had been his boy sweetheart, and 
had a rich gipsy beauty of her own which might 
well plague a young fellow whose heart had not 
thoroughly grafted with another. 

The cropped turf muffled my steps, or Connie 
might have heard me as I came up to tlie 
garden hedge, and saw her behind the elders 
on the other side. Then my doubts felt a 
shaking ; for what was she doing but reading a 
letter and kissing her way through it, as if every 
J33 


CONNIE 


line were a mouth and she must greet it. She 
looked up, and, seeing me, turned red as a haw ; 
then she laughed, and I laughed ; and I opened 
the gate, and with her on my arm walked up 
the path to the house. She said nothing till 
we came to the open window, where she pulled 
up and showed me what was beneath the wide 
garden hat — a happy, flushed face and parted 
lips heavy with news. 

‘ Seth is coming to see you to-morrow.’ 

She tripped off again, throwing back a look 
over her shoulder to see how I had taken it ; 
but her face changed of a sudden, and her eyes 
widened at something behind me. I turned to 
find Mona Grayson standing on the step of the 
window. With no more than a nod and a smile 
to me she ran down the path and kissed Connie 
like a sister just found. They had been school- 
girls together, and there ought to have been 
nothing peculiar in that. But there was, be- 
cause of the queer glint I had caught in her eye, 
and the something in the corners of her mouth 
which was no more affection than whey is 
cheese. There they were, however, and I left 
them picking flowers and talking apace as girls 
will. But an hour or two later, when we sat 

134 


CONNIE 


down to the evening tea, I saw in the flowers 
nearest to me something which I plucked from 
among them, and held up as I would a weed. 
Connie said she had not gathered it, and I put 
it down, thinking hard. 

It was a sprig of rue ! 

II 

But there might be nothing in it, and there 
was rain blowing up from the south, turning all 
my mind to the hay-carrying, which we had 
started that afternoon. The dull clouds were 
drawing over us, and the light was already 
beginning to fade off ; but I kept the men to i,t, 
talking freely of extra beer and pay. There 
were two or three casuals among them, difficult 
fellows once they have earned a day’s wage and 
rounded a bargain, and to-day the sun had 
blazed its best, and maybe they were over-tired ; 
but hearing grumbling from one of them, and 
feeling how the air was damping, I lost my head 
and sent him off with sharp words, and thus 
sowed a wind. A puff of consequence came 
there and then, for out of sheer fellow-feeling 
another of the men, a big Irishman from Mayo, 
I3S 


CONNIE 


threw down his fork, declaring that if Nick 
Redpath went, sure he’d go too, an’ the curse 
of Cromwell on all landlords an’ their dirty 
ways, and so on. But I knew Long Mike and 
liked him, as we all did, so that I was letting him 
blow it all off, and stifling a laugh at work inside 
me, when a sweet ‘ Oh, Mike ’ came across the 
flow, and he stopped all at once to grin and 
scrape cap in hand at Connie. She gave him a 
smile, then a look at his fork, and Mike set to 
again, swinging the cocks on the wain, like so 
much thistledown. 

The incident is one of the trifles which mix up 
with the memory of that day ; for while the men 
were grinning at the conquest, Connie turned 
away with a mantling colour to tell me she was 
going over the hill to see Mrs. Jardine, and 
would be back in the space of an hour. 

‘Better not be longer,’ said I, with a glance 
at the leaden awning above us ; ‘ there’s rain 
about, and ’twill be dark sooner than usual by 
the look of it.’ 

‘ But I have my waterproof, and Mona will be 
with me,’ returned Connie. ‘She is going with 
some fruit, and asked me this afternoon to meet 


36 


CONNIE 


her at the Red Tarn. We shall walk over the 
fields together. You are not angry, dad.’ 

^ No, no ! — go your way, lass, and remember 
me kindly to the old lady — God bless me, no ! ’ 

I watched her out of the gate and wiped my 
brow, wondering why a thought should have so 
touched the fool in me. Yet somehow that 
thought had pierced through to a very nest 
of fears, which, as the minutes went on, 
swarmed up like so many hornets to sting me. 
Could the green thing in Mona’s eye love fair 
dealing any more than an owl did daylight? 
There are tongues which, when malice is behind 
them, will quiver like an adder’s till they can 
give the thrust they have waited for ; yet, 
reasoned I, what could hurt Connie with such a 
bit of paper in her bosom, and such faith aflame 
just under it? Could even the gossip which had 
reached me dim that, or make it burn with a 
smoke ? 

' So I worked on at the hay getting, quietening 
gradually under the press of other things, till the 
payments to the men and another scene with 
Nick Redpath, who had rolled up, sullen with 
ale, to ask for more work on the morrow, drove 
Connie clean out of my head. Some pride in 

137 


CONNIE 


the two fat ricks under the tarpaulins kept her 
out a little longer, and I lingered about seeing to 
the ventilators, and tightening a rope here and 
there, till one of the lads came through the barn 
with a message from the house. Then pride had 
a fall, and I looked away at the dim ribbon of 
the lane which Connie had mounted, with the 
words humming in my ears that she was not 
back yet. All my uneasiness returned, and the 
old brood of fears rose anew, peopling the 
gloom, and seeming, harpy-like, to spit at me in 
the first drops of rain. There was no right 
reason for such a state, for the girl had been 
out after dark times before, and I could think of 
no possible hurt that might befall her then ; but 
though I felt that judgment was laughing at me 
and calling the soft side of me a fool, all the 
same I could not forbear setting off right away to 
seek her out myself, and so make sure of things. 
She was my child, and I did feel that her 
happiness, as sensitive to unkind touches as a 
butterfly’s plumage, was in jeopardy that night. 

Long Mike was in front of me, I remember, 
and as he stepped over the meadow stile on his 
way to Ashton, he passed a good-night with 
me and strode down the path, whistling ‘The 
138 


CONNIE 


Cruiskeen Lawn.’ I bethought me then that he 
would pass by the Red Tarn, and turned to 
send a shout after him ; but his whistling went 
on, blowing to me on the wind, and I stepped 
out again on my own way. 

Breasting the hill to the top I descended on 
the other side, while the rising wind hissed in 
the trees and the rain began to spatter down like 
small shot. I opened the umbrella I had brought, 
wishing Connie well under it, and s^dashed along 
till I came to the gate-posts and stone globes 
which fronted Mrs. Jardine’s house. It was all 
in darkness, and a dim whiteness of drawn blinds 
at the upper windows told of slumberers behind 
them. 

Connie certainly was not there. Of course 
not. She was gone home with Mona and had 
lingered with the Graysons, maybe, for some 
little talk, and I had missed her because she 
would return by the Warbury road, it was clear 
enough, thought I, staring all the while at the 
house, as if it were arguing with me, but really 
to notice with some underflow of curiosity what 
its features were doing in the thickness of the 
night. For every two seconds or so a fitful 
distinctness grew to them, so that I could see 

139 


CONNIE 


the thin leads of its windows and the very leaves 
of the pear tree which framed them. There 
again — great Powers ! I swung myself about 
and stood rooted to the ground. The sky was 
aglow with dancing light, growing with every jig 
to as pretty a glare as ever graced a Walpurgis. 
Every tree on the hill-top stood black against 
the fiendish truth of it ; and there between the 
hedges of the lane a horseman rose clear in the 
lurid air, and was lost again. I laughed aloud : 
he was speeding to tell me my own farm was on 
fire. 


Ill 

There is no need to describe all that followed 
that night. It was a big fire, destroying good 
ricks with much else about them, and licking 
more than once the high gables of the house, so 
that excitement ran high, and Nick Redpath 
had good reason to cower in the ditch he was 
found in. But among the flame-lit pictures his 
handiwork has left on my mind those wave 
back most which show me Connie as she ap- 
peared then with her trouble fresh upon her. 
The wild scene perhaps fitted in with her 
humour, for she watched on from the shelter of 
140 


CONNIE 


the cart-shed, all dishevelled and mud-stained, 
just as Mike had found her — her hands clasped 
in front, her face quite set, and her eyes burning 
with slow fires of their own, which showed even 
in the glare that beat upon her. I saw her, as 
it were, in flashes when at odd moments I was 
able to glance that way ; but there was once 
when I had to look again lest the light had 
deceived me. For Seth had passed me a 
minute before, eager, lover-like, to find where 
she might be ; and there he was, standing beside 
her with haggard, dumfoundered face, while 
she looked away with one hard as bronze. The 
engine from Evesham came up at that moment, 
and I lost sight of them. Seth I didn’t see 
again, and Connie only once, as the wind blew 
the yard clear and showed her lying sense- 
less by the smoking ruins of the stables, with 
Long Mike kneeling alongside her. She had 
staggered to the charred doorway and fallen, 
crying Seth’s name. I learnt why afterwards. 
She had suddenly missed him, and, growing 
uneasy and then alarmed, had vainly sought 
among the crowd, gathering the tale the while, 
that he had not been seen since he had helped 
to free the horses an hour before. There was 


CONNIE 


no time, and she was in no mood, poor lass, to 
reason — the fear itself had struck her down. 

How much anguish of mind had preceded 
that crowning shock I never knew ; but the 
two together kindled something else for us to 
quench, which burnt on for weary days and 
nights in spite of us, and, with such wild talk 
along with it, that I wished my ears away every 
time I heard it. Why should I tell what her 
poor tongue did, since it betrayed her heart’s 
secrets while reason lay sick, not knowing what 
was happening? Love, scorn, beseeching, con- 
tempt — it was a tangled tale, hanging on a name 
which she would cry out sometimes for hours. 
But Seth never came to the call, and not a man 
in the parish could give later evidence of him 
than his plunging into the smoke of the stables 
after the flames had caught them. The whole 
of the farm buildings had been burnt to bare 
shells, and not till every barrow-load of debris 
had been wheeled away did I breathe freely with 
the knowledge that the lad had escaped after 
all, and that I could tell Connie so, when her 
wits were ready for it. I said as much to 
Farmer Marston. 

‘Ay, and tell her it was not her own whip 
142 


CONNIE 


alone that sent him off/ quoth he, settling in 
his saddle, having waited about uneasy himself 
— ‘ though those who saw it say she barely 
spoke to him. He’d had a bit of my tongue 
that night, Harding; and a young blood twice 
stung is like to lose its head, and leap the hedge 
of common sense for a gallop on its own ac- 
count. Seth will pull up somewhere, but he 
shall have his run out as far as I’m concerned, 
the young dog. Mike, if you see my lad on 
your travels before you’re this way again for the 
corn harvest, tell him — tell him what you 
know.’ 

And he waved his hand to Connie’s window 
and trotted off. But he was heavy in his saddle, 
as we could both see, and his reckless way of 
taking the harvest-man into his feelings had 
spoken for itself. The act, however, seemed to 
bring Mike into closer bond with us, and I 
turned to say I could find enough work for him 
if he cared to stay. But he had slouched sud- 
denly away, saying nothing ; and when I asked 
for him later on, he was nowhere to be found. 

However, Seth was safe, and his father was 
better than his word, as the advertisements in 
the news sheets soon testified ; but time went on, 

143 


CONNIE 


bringing no tidings and no peace of mind to 
Connie, or cool interval of reason, when a word 
might be slipped into her consciousness to kill 
the delusion which was so running off with her. 
After the doctor was gone one night, looking 
graver than usual, I sat in the arm-chair wonder- 
ing if the chance would ever come at all. And 
if it did, thought I, and she had the comfort of 
knowing that her lover was alive, was there not 
his disappearance, as well as that scene at the 
Red Tarn still to be explained? There was 
Mona, but the girl never came near, and it was 
doubtful whether she would confess to anything 
which would prove to Connie that what she had 
seen was only one of those half-truths which are 
the worst of lies. Young love, upgazing at its 
loadstar, will fall over such things and faint with 
the hurt of them, till faith helps it up again, 
showing the light still shining, and brighter than 
ever maybe. I looked up at my wife’s picture, 
remembering the ills we had passed through, 
and it seemed that Phyllis was looking remem- 
brance too. Would Connie weather her sea of 
trouble to gaze back on it with a face as love- 
warmed and content as that? The hope fronted 
a fear as strong as it. For all the while I could 
144 


CONNIE 


hear the faint murmurings, upstairs, where the 
thinning flame of her life was flickering and sway- 
ing, as though it felt already the winnowing of 
death’s wings. 

I sat on, listening now to the soft foot-falls of 
the woraen-folk upstairs, now to the sighing of 
the night wind among the eaves outside, till by- 
and-by the latter had all my hearing, because of 
the strange sob-like sounds it was making. It 
was as if the old house itself was despairing at 
last for the young thing within it. But the 
sound died away, and the next I heard was the 
click of a door-latch, then the quick rustling of a 
woman’s dress, and there at my knees was Mona 
Grayson. 

Distraught and contrite she poured the truth 
out, as if it were beyond more holding. I lis- 
tened, and had much to do to piece together the 
broken words and make sense of them. But as 
she went on, and I saw the beauty of her face, 
flushed now, and softened with tears, it seemed 
hard to blame Seth for his share in the folly. 
Could any young fellow have turned from such 
lips, offered as they were, for the last time, with 
sisterly blessings for his happiness, and the rest? 
She had kept his back to Connie, and had flung 
10 145 


CONNIE 


her arms round him, and hung there like an 
Imogen, making him kiss her to complete the 
picture. It angered me to listen to it. She 
had seen Connie watching from the trees ; had 
seen her white, dazed face, and her blind stum- 
ble of a walk, as she had turned back into the 
wood, without one touch of shame across her 
triumph. Only when Connie was gone, and 
there was no audience for the comedy, did her 
better self rise up and make jealousy lower its 
crest. Her parting with Seth, longing to speak, 
but afraid to ; her gathering remorse ; the pride 
that had held her dumb ; its giving way to-night 
under the sick one’s window — it all came out 
bit by bit, and much else with it, which she 
never spoke of, but which was there all the 
same — her hopeless passion for Seth Marston. 
It was behind every sob and tear; and what 
could I do but forgive her, or try to, remember- 
ing what love was and what odd tricks it will 
play with the best of us? Mona went home 
limp and heavy-footed, and no reproaches of 
mine went after her. She had left good medi- 
cine for Connie, and perhaps out of her repent- 
ance some angel had flown to bring peace to us. 
For she had not been gone many minutes when 
146 


CONNIE 


Connie’s voice quietened, and she fell into a 
deep sleep, to awake at cockcrow asking what 
had happened. 

But when she had slept off the opiate we 
had given her, and I thought I might tell her 
some part of my news, her own question grew 
mine as I watched her face, seeing that she 
listened with no more emotion than if I were 
telling her the alphabet. I kissed her and said 
no more, thinking it some temporary torpor 
born of the riot she had passed through. But 
as the days went on, each leaving its quantum of 
strength to help nature restore what had been 
lost of shape and feature, it seemed that only 
half of the lass was returning, and that the other 
half had withered away beyond all reviving. 
Even when she was able to get up, and move 
about the room with something of her old 
grace, the cheated eye had only to look at 
her stony features and abstracted gaze to know 
that she was dragging a dead self about with 
her. 

But good might come from the change the 
doctors had advised, and Mrs. Jardine and the 
vicar’s wife had promised to take her with them 
to the seaside place they were going to; so I 
147 


CONNIE 


took heart, and was glad enough one August 
morning when the chaise drove up, to put 
Connie into it, and follow them in the gig to the 
station at Evesham. 

Rain had fallen overnight, and the still sheeny 
air held pleasant odours, while the eye, roam 
where it would, saw only rich autumn pictures 
with a blue tinted hill for every distance. It 
was a day to feel God and be thankful, and that 
came all the easier when I saw that Connie 
gazed about her, showing some sort of interest 
in what she saw, as well as in what was passing 
in the way of talk. So that when we arrived 
at the station, and were pacing to and fro till 
the train might come, I began to look at her 
apathy of mind as no more than a shell which 
her soul would crack, and all in good time. 
Then something happened to show how thought 
will sometimes push on prophecy. 

Two nien in brown suits, walking slowly ahead 
of us with keen eyes for all who passed them, 
and impudent backward glances at us in the bar- 
gain, caused us to turn about in order to avoid 
them, and we were nearing the waiting rooms 
again, when out of one them, and right in front of 
us, stepped M^na Grayson. Connie gave a start 
148 


CONNIE 


and clutched at my arm, trembling violently, 
while Mona shrank back out of sight. The two 
ladies followed her, but I went on with Connie, 
half supporting her to a seat near by. Her face 
was less fixed, and there were slight quiverings 
at her mouth and a new awakening look strug- 
gling in her eyes. I was noting these things with 
some content when she stopped dead, staring 
distractedly round her, and then at the train, 
which at that moment entered the station. I 
looked too, seeing, as she did, a big grinning 
face far out of a window, from which came a 
sound like ‘ Aroo ! ’ and then, before I could 
blink again, a door shot open, and there on the 
platform, capering like a satyr, was Long Mike. 
But it was not this fandango which tightened 
Connie’s grip on my arm, it was the red-coated 
figure which leapt out after him, to be seized on 
the instant by the two men in brown. We both 
saw the struggling at once. 

^Seth! Seth!’ 

The cry rang clear above all the din, and 
Seth heard it. With a quick bend and a rise he 
flung both men off, and hastened towards us. 
Connie pulled, and I let her go, and in the 
stroke of a second they were together, as heed- 
149 


CONNIE 


less of eyes as if they were in Raby Wood ; and 
Mike would let no one go near them. 

Little more needs telling. Only Mona caught 
that train, and it bore her to a distant town, 
where she now lives with a relative, and not 
unhappily, if what we hear be true. Seth, cast 
off and rejected as he had reckoned himself, 
had done what many a young fellow has done 
before him, when dolour clouds the issue of 
things and life shows no perspective — he had 
enlisted. Mike, suspecting this, had traced 
him out and told him such a tale that the 
lad had taken French leave, and so brought 
pursuers on him as a deserter. But he returned 
to his barracks, where he was able to explain 
things, and it only remained for him to buy 
himself out. 

And while all this was passing it was good 
to see Connie and her glad awakening after 
such night; it was good to hear the Lieder 
again in the still latterglow, when she liked best 
to play them ; and when the evening of the 
return came, and footsteps sounded in the hall 
coming nearer and nearer, it was good also to 
see her start up and turn such a pair of eyes to 
the door. 

150 


CONNIE 


But how they met, only the picture saw, for I 
had stepped from the window at the sound of a 
whistling, and stood by the wicket listening to 
the * Cruiskeen Lawn,’ with my eye on the 
evening star. 


Sandro 


I 

It was when I was a beginner; when my 
diploma, my young wife, and the new brass 
plate which told the passing world that I was 
‘ Max Hamlyn, Surgeon,’ were the three most 
interesting things in the world. I was proud of 
my diploma, I was proud of my wife, I was 
proud — very proud of my brass plate. I onjy 
wanted one other thing to make me a very 
Lucifer : a practice. The busy round of calls, 
the dashing brougham, the two-guinea fees, all 
these were things to dream of. And I used to 
dream a good deal in those days. Everything 
was in front ; now all is behind. But what 
matter? Let me tell you about Sandro. It 
is a singular story ; it will not make you laugh ; 
I question whether you will even smile, unless it 
is at my poor diction — for I am no raconteur 

152 


SANDRO 


— but it is a true story, and 1 will tell it all 
in good faith, just as it happened. 

I said I had no practice, but I had a nascent 
one, consisting of three patients ; and in order 
to reach one of these I had twice a day to cross 
St. Nemo’s Churchyard, which, being in the 
confines of the city, was in those days a much- 
used short cut from one thoroughfare to another. 
Perhaps because of that, or because the lazzaroni 
of all countries affect the vicinity of a church, 
St. Nemo’s Walk — which was wide and well 
flagged — was never without its mendicants. I 
remember them all. There was the legless little 
man, who sat on a truck and was always gazing 
up at life ; then the blind old lady in a poke 
bonnet, who felt her way through Holy Writ 
with perennial nods of her head ; then the stolid, 
one-armed Jack Tar in gala straw hat and ducks, 
who always rolled his quid as he disposed of 
a tract ; and, lastly, the white-headed old negro 
with no arms at all, who received the sym- 
pathetic coin in a tin money-box slung from 
his neck, 

'Fhere they were, always in the same positions, 
in the same attitudes ; and after passing and re- 
passing for some days I remember my eyes had 

153 


SANDRO 


become so habituated to the lugubrious quartet 
that when, one morning, I discovered a stranger 
between the nodding Scripture-reader and the 
Jack Tar, I stared at the crouching figure with 
lazy curiosity, and with a slight feeling that here 
was an enemy to the established order of things. 
He was a pavement artist, a common enough 
sight in the London streets ; and without looking 
at his coloured display I passed on, and had 
very soon forgotten the matter. But returning 
an hour later I was reminded again of the inno- 
vation in the churchyard, and I cast a keener 
glance at the stranger as I strode quickly by. 

He had completed his little array of pictures, 
and was standing, not with the slouching, half- 
awake apathy of his class, but with an erect, 
eager air, and with a swift, searching glance at 
every face that passed him. Something in the 
man’s aspect made me turn for another look, 
and I slowed my steps to take a complete survey 
of him. 

Over the medium height ; athletic figure ; 
a certain erect dignity of manner ; a dark, oval, 
Italian-like face, pierced with a pair of lustrous 
black eyes ; age about twenty — these items 
rewarded my long glance, and as I walked 

154 


SANDRO 


homeward 1 found myself wondering — for want 
of something better to wonder at, I suppose — 
why the man was there, who was he, and why 
he shot such an eagle glance at each passing 
countenance. 

In this way I worked up a sort of interest in 
the handsome artificer in chalks, and when I 
went by again next day it was to satisfy a distinct 
curiosity that I paused to criticise his art. 

I was greatly surprised. I had expected the 
usual display of shipwrecks, seas by moonlight, 
and fish out of water. What I saw was an ex- 
cellent drawing of the Grand Canal at Venice, 
and another scene which the man had scarcely 
finished, but which was clearly recognisable as the 
Bay of Naples with the smoking mountain in the 
distance. 

Involuntarily I looked at the artist. He was 
giving the finishing touches to a red-sailed 
felucca ; but, conscious perhaps of my curious 
gaze, he glanced suddenly up. Then he touched 
his hat with a smile, and spoke some words in 
broken English. There was no resisting that 
smile; it vibrated right through me, and my 
hand sought my pocket mesmerically. He 
murmured a ^ Thank you, signore,’ and I 

155 


SANDRO 


turned away. But looking back after going 
a few yards, I found him again bending over 
his work with the same intense look as before. 

After that Sandro and I became great friends. 
I was Goth enough to like his rough pictures — 
of which day after day he limned an endless 
variety — and when he was not surrounded by 
a gaping group of more popular admirers I 
would often pause to have a chat with him. A 
long convalescent visit to Nice as a youth had 
given me some knowledge of Italian, and when 
that failed me Sandro’s English had a turn, so 
that we got along pretty well. In exchange for 
my coins he told me many things. His name 
was Sandro, and till twelve months before he 
had^ been employed by a vine-grower not , far 
from Cori, among the Volscian Hills. But he 
had run away, and taken to a wandering life. 
The pictures he drew were scenes and places he 
had seen. 

With an accordion and a few native songs 
he had worked his way at last to London. 
Here he had learnt from one of the craft how 
profitable pavement pictures were, and, being 
passionately fond of drawing, had abandoned 
his instrument for the crayon. All this and 
156 


SANDRO 


more he told me willingly; but when I asked 
him why he had chosen such a life his face 
would darken, and he would relapse into moody 
silence. I soon found that that was a tender 
subject, and was careful to avoid it. What I 
did learn was that Sandro had a purpose in his 
wanderings known only to himself. 

By-and-by my patient recovered, and I 
ceased to traverse St. Nemo’s Walk. But I 
often thought of Sandro. Once, when the 
weather was bad, he had done me two or three 
sketches of his native scenery, and for some 
time these lay on my study table, daily remind- 
ing me of my pavement artist ; but they became 
covered at last with other papers, and unaided 
now by the little souvenirs I forgot Sandro for a 
time in the rush of newer and more important 
interests. The cure I had just effected had 
brought me other similar cases ; I began to feel 
the first excitement of dawning success, and to 
feel, too, some of the haunting anxieties of those 
who do battle with death. 

Indeed, I became so absorbed in my few 
cases, that when, one afternoon, I came in and 
learned that an old friend was waiting for me 
I experienced a momentary annoyance. But 

157 


SANDRO 


as I mounted upstairs to my study — into which 
he had been shown — a rush of the old glad 
emotions of boyhood chased away my irrita- 
bility, so that I quickened my pace, and eagerly 
opened the door. 

‘ Gerard ! ^ 

‘ Max ! ’ 

And we gripped hands, and exchanged the 
straight, silent look of old-time friendship. 

‘ I was in your neighbourhood, old man, and 
thought I would look you up. Only got back 
from Paris last week. Why, what a worried old 
Galen you look ! ’ 

I made a laughing reply, and we glided off 
into one of those desultory question-and-answer 
talkf^ which long-parted friends most delight in. 
Gerard Melton had known me at Rugby as a 
boy. From there he had gone to London to 
study at South Kensington, and thence to Italy, 
where he had stayed till the death of an uncle 
some months ago had necessitated his return 
to England. With a complete artistic educa- 
tion Gerard had brought home a wife, and was 
now living at Brompton. Before he left I intro- 
duced him to my own wife, and it was arranged 
that we should pay him a visit at his new home. 


SANDRO 


In a few days, therefore, we took the Under- 
ground to Brompton, and soon had the happiness 
of beholding the most beautiful young girl we 
had ever seen. Tall, graceful, possessed of a 
mobile face of classic regularity, of a voice of 
softest timbre, and of eyes which changed with 
all she said, but which were always captivating, 
Mrs. Melton would have subjugated the most 
case-hardened bachelor, not with the witty rep- 
artee of the lips, which wooes the intellect, 
but with the subtle charm of person which goes 
straight to the heart, and is its own argument. 
But there was one thing which we at first 
omitted to notice, but which grew into our 
consciousness gradually — an absence of that 
delicate finish of manner which marks the 
cultured lady. Gerard had married a peasant’s 
daughter. 

We all, however, made great friends, and 
less than a week afterwards Mr. and Mrs. 
Melton returned our visit. I was away when 
they arrived, and when I came in from my 
calls I went first to the surgery to mix some 
medicine, and then to my study to consult a 
book anent a difficult symptom which had 
troubled me. The volume was not in the case, 

159 


SANDRO 


and I turned the papers over to see if it had 
got buried on my table. In doing so I came 
across Sandro’s drawings. The glance I threw 
at them suddenly fathered a new thought upon 
me, and when I went down to meet the callers 
I took them with me to display them to the 
educated taste of my friend. There was a 
cordial greeting, and as I laid the sketches on 
a side-table and advanced to meet her, I 
thought Gerard’s Italian wife more beautiful 
than ever. 

The chatty minutes went on, and I had for- 
gotten all about my sketches, and was talking 
by the window with Gerard, who had risen to 
go, when I observed the tall figure of Mrs. 
Melton cross the room to look at an engraved 
copy of Turner’s ‘ Bay of Baise,’ which hung on 
the wall. My wife went up with her, and some 
few remarks passed. Still talking with Gerard I 
kept my eyes on the two. Presently Mrs. 
Melton looked down from the picture to the 
table beneath it, on which lay the sketches. 

With a quick cry of surprise she stretched 
out her hand and took the top drawing, holding 
it in front of her with parted lips and dilated 
eyes. 

i6o 


SANDRO 


‘ Monica mia, what is it?’ questioned Gerard, 
walking up to her and looking over her 
shoulder. 

Molino — nostro Molmo P she exclaimed. 

‘ Why, so it is ! ’ And he took the sketch 
from her and examined it curiously. ‘ How 
came you with this, old man ? ’ he added, with 
a quick glance at me. 

I held my hand out in silence, and he passed 
it to me. 

It was a rough enough picture, a few quaintly- 
shaped houses perched on a rocky terrace, and 
standing out in grey relief from a distance of 
opal sky and soft pink mountain ranges. As- 
cending the steep road was a brown-robed 
Capuchin, escorting a well-laden mule ; behind 
him, just rounding the knotted and gnarled 
trunk of a giant olive tree, were two picturesque 
peasant girls ; while away on the left, over a 
vale of olive groves, was a glimpse of blue sea 
and a single brown-sailed xebec. 

‘ Is it possible you know the place ? ’ I 
asked, after an instant’s pause. 

‘ Not only that, but it’s one of the obscurest 
villages in Italy, and before myself there had 
not been an artist there for years. Know it ! ’ 
II i6i 


SANDRO 


turning to his lady with a merry laugh. ‘ Monica, 
cara^ do we know Molino? But who did it, 
Max? Speak out, and don’t look such a 
Memnon.’ 

‘What do you think of the drawing?’ said 
I, evading the question. 

‘In its way, perfect. I should say it’s by 
an old hand, thrown off in an idle moment, for 
there’s little finish about it.’ 

‘ Well, if you are coming this way on Friday, 
as you say, I’ll take you to see the artist. I 
fancy he will interest you. Is that agreed ? ’ 
And I smiled across to Mrs. Melton, and then 
at Gerard. 

He laughed. . , 

‘ A mystery — eh ! Well, then, agreed ; and 
till then we shall be consumed with curiosity.’ 

When Friday came Gerard presented himself 
in the afternoon with a laughing apology that 
he had forgotten the engagement and had 
dallied, was it too late ? It was a cloudy autumn 
day, but there was still a good light, and the 
sun would not set for an hour. It was not too 
late, I thought, and accordingly we at once 
proceeded to St. Nemo’s Walk. 

162 


SANDRO 


It was three weeks or more since I had first 
seen Sandro there, and lest he should have gone 
away to adorn the pavement elsewhere, I had 
ascertained the day before that he was still an 
habitue of the churchyard. And now, as we 
sauntered along, I broke off from a discussion 
of Impressionism to tell my friend who the artist 
was. His interest increased tenfold. This 
rather pleased me, for I had kept the truth from 
him through a fear that he might not trouble 
about a mere pavement artist, and for Sandro’s 
sake I wished it otherwise. It seemed quite 
feasible to me that Gerard, who since his uncle’s 
death was well enough off, and quite free to 
exercise an artistic benevolence, might take the 
clever young Italian in hand, and divert his 
talents from the flagstones to the artist’s canvas. 

As we entered the one end of the walk Gerard 
called my attention to a curious monument, but 
before looking round I glanced to see if Sandro 
was in his place. At the same moment he 
looked up in our direction, and, without seeming 
to notice me, fastened his eyes on the averted 
face of Gerard. He gave a quick start, his lips 
drew back, and his handsome face twisted into 
positive ugliness ; then he knelt suddenly down, 
163 


SANDRO 


and with a swift motion of his hand defaced one 
of his pictures. It had all happened in a mo- 
ment, and I could scarcely believe my eyes as 
we came up and found him calmly tracing the 
outline of a mountain on the smeared stone 
which the minute before had presented a finished 
view. 

But, though apparently calm, Sandro was not 
himself. He answered me in monosyllables, 
his voice was like that of another man, and not 
once did he raise his head. When Gerard 
spoke I thought his hand trembled for a moment, 
but he made no response. 

^ Do you know Molino, I say ? * queried 
Gerard again, in Italian. ‘Body of J^acchus ! 
are you deaf?’ 

Here Sandro’s hand trembled so that he 
dropped his chalk. At last he replied in the 
same altered voice : 

‘ No, signore : I do not know Molino.’ 

‘ How, then, do you come to sell sketches of 
the place? ’ said Gerard, this time in English. 

‘ Ah, that was copy from book — book of 
pictoors. I did not know it was Molino.’ 

Sandro was calm again now, and his hand was 
steady as he traced his drawing. 

164 


SANDRO 


Gerard questioned him further, and, throwing 
down his card, asked him to come and see 
him some night. 

‘ And bring some of your sketches. Perhaps 
I can help you to something better than this 
sort of thing.’ 

He waited a moment for an answer, but 
Sandro went on with his tracing without a word. 
At length Gerard turned on his heel and walked 
away, rather nettled I think. 

I tried once again : 

‘ What is the matter with you to-day, Sandro ? 
Why won’t you accept my friend’s offer? You 
are very foolish.’ 

H will think. I have signore’s address; I 
will think,’ was all he would say. 

I joined Gerard, who accompanied me home, 
yielding to my invitation to stay to dinner. 

‘ So that is your artist ? ’ he said as we walked 
along. 

‘ Yes,’ I answered meekly, feeling some moral 
limpness at the result of my little ‘ mystery.’ 
^ What do you think of him ? ’ I ventured to 
add. 

Gerard twinkled. 

‘ I should describe him as queer.” But 

165 


SANDRO 


that may be only another way of saying he is a 
genius, you know. What was Leonardo’s reply 
to the monk, when ’ 

‘ Come, no jesting, Gerard. You must 
allow ’ 

‘That he is clever? Yes, in his way. His 
perspective is wonderful ; and his colouring, his 
distances — really the fellow ought to be taken 
in hand. If he turns up I’ll have a talk with 
him. But he didn’t jump at the invitation, 
did he?’ 

‘ Perhaps ’ 

‘You must buttonhole him, and harangue to 
him of the tide in the affairs of men. Give him 
the n^agic spectacles and let him see fame and 
scudi in life’s middle distance. Then, if he 
likes the picture, we may do something with him, 
boor as he is. If West began by chalking his 
bedroom walls, your Sandro may yet live to 
fresco a Sistine Chapel. Who knows? The 
great Michael himself had a strain of the boor 
in him.’ 

And Gerard laughed and changed the subject. 

Immediately our dinner was over, and before 
I could send for cigars, he arose, with an apol- 
ogy, to catch his train. It was then dark and 

i66 


SANDRO 


there was a heavy spatter of rain. I offered to 
whistle for a cab, but he declined, saying he 
would run as far as the stand, which was only a 
short distance away. Whereupon he put up his 
urhbrella, and, shouting further adieux, plunged 
into the darkness of our somewhat lonely street 
and disappeared. I returned to the dining- 
room and picked up the evening paper, paus- 
ing now and again to pass a remark to my wife. 
At length, throwing the sheet down, I rose, pre- 
paratory to mounting to my study. 

‘ Yes, Gerard is pretty sure to get on,’ I said, in 
continuance of our talk. ‘ He has already had 
two pictures in the Academy, and both well hung. 
In a few years he’ll be an Associate, and then the 
game’s his own. Dear old chap ! he ’ 

Here came a violent ringing at the bell — pull 
after pull in loud alarm. Janet looked up 
affrighted, whilst I went out half pleased at a 
commotion which seemed to promise another 
patient. I reached for my hat as the maid 
ran past me and opened the door. 

‘ Is Dr. Hamlyn in ? ' 

The shouted words blew in with the wind and 
rain, and as I hurried to the door the hall-lamp 
sputtered out. 


167 


SANDRO 


But I had seen the policeman and his wet, 
troubled face. 

^ Yes, yes. What is it, my man?’ 

‘ Will you cOme at once, please ? Been foul 
play just below here. The gentleman men- 
tioned you. He’s sinking fast.’ 

Without pausing to think what the words 
might purport, I hurried after the man, and, 
following his lead into an entry some three 
doors below, came to a dark huddled figure lying 
there without sound or motion. 

The constable turned the slide of his lantern and 
revealed the ghastly features of Gerard Melton ! 

I could hardly suppress a cry of horror, but, 
summoning a show of professional calmness, I 
felt, and found his heart still feebly beating. 
Quickly we carried him to my house, and there 
I fonnd that poor Gerard was stabbed in three 
places, and the little blood left in him was ebb- 
ing so feebly through his heart that its valves 
threatened every moment to cease for ever. He 
was quite unconscious, and a few minutes later 
breathed his last without having uttered a word. 

When Mrs. Melton arrived, in answer to my 
telegraphic message, she read the truth in our 
faces, and without a word passed into the 

i68 


SANDRO 


chamber of death. My wife accompanied her, 
and I paced up and down the hall in a state of 
painful tension. From within I could hear 
nothing ; the silence was oppressive, and at last 
I entered. Mrs. Melton was standing beside 
the couch, erect and queenly as ever, not look- 
ing at the still body below, but with her face 
upturned and covered with her hand. Janet 
looked piteously round to me and then at the 
afflicted lady. I approached her, muttering 
some words of comfort, but evidently they fell 
unheard. Presently her hand fell, and she 
looked steadfastly at the dead face, passing her 
finger-tips over the forehead and mouth with a 
pathetic quietude of manner which I feared 
would only end in a dangerous paroxysm. And, 
indeed, three hours afterwards the beautiful 
young creature lay tossing in a wild delirium, 
sad to see and listen to, and it was many nights 
and days ere we could bring her back, a wan 
and wasted woman, to a sane world again. 

II 

In the meantime the murder of Gerard was 
wrapped in mystery. The policeman deposed at 
169 


SANDRO 


the inquest that while on his beat he had heard 
a moan from a cul-de-sac leading from the street, 
and going to see the cause had found the ill- 
fated artist lying helpless and bleeding to death. 

He had caught a few half-articulate words, 
and had then hurried to me. The wounds 
were deep, and evidently the work of a dagger. 
There were no traces of a struggle, but from the 
blood marks on the pavement the murderer had 
evidently dealt his blows in the publicity of the 
street, and then dragged his victim to the corner 
in which he was found. 

When Mrs. Melton was sufficiently convales- 
cent, she accompanied my wife to a quiet seaside 
resort on the south coast. At her instance I 
disposed' of the furniture at Brompton, removing 
such personal belongings as she wished to retain 
to my house preparatory to her return, after the 
birth of her child, to the old home among the 
Volscian Hills. 

In the letters I regularly received from Janet 
I had very good accounts of the young widow, 
and ere long, but for a deep and ever-present 
melancholy, I was apprised of her comparative 
recovery. Then they left the little fishing village 
and returned home. 


170 


SANDRO 


It was Mrs. Melton’s desire to stay with us 
and to occupy the same room in which poor 
Gerard had Iain in the first days of his long sleep. 
It was not a healthy desire, and I was afraid of 
the associations, but she was set on it almost to 
insistency, and I let her have her way. As well 
as we could without unseemliness, we tried to 
cheer the poor broken heart, but her rare smiles 
and the memory deep down in her great eyes 
were sad to see, and only for the knowledge that 
she would soon be a mother, I believe she would 
have abandoned herself to one of those lingering 
despairs which have only one ending. As the 
days went on she became no stronger; and 
when at last her child was born the lack of vital 
strength left her more dead than alive. 

On her table was a half-finished letter which 
she had been writing to her mother. 

Send the letter, and ask her to come to me,’ 
she said the next morning, and obediently I 
added the summons in a few urgent words, and 
sent the letter away. 

I had called in an eminent surgeon to assist 
me, and I had still some hopes that we might 
save her. But on the fourth night she awoke 
from a troubled sleep, saying : 

171 


SANDRO 


* La mia madre. She cannot come. Guido 
— tell Guido * 

The rest was inarticulate, but we had heard 
enough to tell us that her dream had taken away 
the hope that had in a measure sustained her. 
A few hours later, after asking to see the bam- 
bino^ Monica Melton died in my wife’s arms, 
the light fading from her eyes as she took her 
last look at the child. 

It was all very sad and painful, and I went 
about with a heavy enough heart. No word 
had come from Italy, and I was wondering if 
any one would turn up in time for the funeral. 
The afternoon following her death I was in my 
surgery making up a prescription when the maid 
brought nie a letter, and said that the bearer was 
waiting. 

^ Tell him to wait. Stay ! ’ I had opened 
the cover and read the first line or two. ‘ Show 
him up to my room.’ 

And as I finished my mixing I could hear 
the heavy tread of a man ascending the stairs. 
Corking the bottle, I laid it down and finished 
reading the note. It was from the padre of 
Monica’s native village, and was to the effect 
that Giulia Piozzi, her mother, was unable to 
172 


SANDRO 


undertake the journey to England, but she had 
entrusted one Guido Vengo, a nephew, and him- 
self an old friend of Monica’s, to go in her stead 
and receive any message, etc. 

Slowly I mounted the stairs to my study, loth 
to tell even a family friend the sad truth, and 
wondering not a little at this strange fruition of 
Monica’s dream. Seeing the servant hurry- 
ing down the next flight of stairs, I hesitated a 
moment before opening the door. She came 
swiftly up, and whispered that the visitor had 
requested to be shown at once to the presence 
of Mrs. Melton. 

‘ And did you tell him the truth ? ’ I asked. 

‘ No, sir ; I was afraid to. He looked that 
wild and excited, he frightened me. I simply 
pointed to the room, and then he let go my 
wrist, and walked in and closed the door. I 
thought it was all right, sir ; he said as he was 
a relation.’ 

I hardly knew whether to feel irritated or 
relieved by this information. I was certainly 
saved a painful duty, but I would rather have 
performed that than have the stranger learn the 
awful truth from the dumb lips of the dead. 
With mingled feelings I walked to the end of 

173 


SANDRO 


the corridor, and softly opened the door. Just 
as silently I entered the room, and looked 
through the dim light towards the bed. There 
I saw a strange and pathetic sight. 

Nursing the corpse in his arms, so that the 
head lay on his shoulder, and the white face 
within an inch of his, the man sat on the bed- 
side swaying his body to and fro, and kissing 
the bloodless lips and forehead, and even the 
thick dark hair, in a silent agony of grief pain- 
ful to witness. 

For a few moments I stood in silence ; then, 
finding my voice, I ventured a gentle word or 
two ; but the stranger appeared not to hear me, 
only strained the body nearer to his heart ; now 
lifting the^ long hair in his hand and carrying it 
reverently to his lips ; now kissing the cold 
brow ; now drawing his head back to gaze 
ardently at the beautiful features. All the time 
his own face was hidden from me. I could 
only see that he was decently attired ; that he 
was tall and square-shouldered, and had a well- 
shaped head covered with little black ringlets. 

I went up to him, and placed my hand on his 
shoulder. He started at the touch, but clutched 
the corpse tighter as he looked wildly up at me. 

174 


SANDRO 


I fell back in astonishment, not at the gaunt, 
wasted face, nor the burning, bloodshot eyes, but 
at the recollection which I saw beyond them. 

‘ Sandro ! ’ 

As far as surprise could enter into such agony 
of mind he was surprised. Only for an instant. 
His face turned downwards again, and he pro- 
ceeded to caress the long tresses and to imprint 
the unfelt kisses, oblivious of everything save 
what he held in his arms. 

Again I went up to him, and, choking down 
the lump in my throat, spoke a few low words, 
trying at the same time to loosen his hold of 
Monica. At first he resisted, and I paused to 
show in stronger language the desecration of 
his conduct. He listened in silence till I had 
done, then he pushed my arm aside and him- 
self replaced the body in its proper position, 
smoothing the coverlet and restoring the fallen 
passion-flowers to their places ; then he knelt 
down by the bedside as if to pray. I bowed my 
head, but it seemed not in Sandro’s power to 
approach the mercy-seat; he appeared to be 
convulsed with inward pain, and the words 
would not rise to his lips. At last, with one loud 
cry, which I shall never forget, he dropped his 

175 


SANDRO 


head upon his hands and wept long and passion- 
ately. Janet entering at that moment saw the 
kneeling figure, and, woman-like, would have 
approached him and spoken words of consola- 
tion. But I caught her hand and held her by 
me till the suffering man had thrown off his burden 
of grief. Then he allowed me to lead him away. 

On the next day Monica was borne to the 
cemetery, and the only mourners were Gerard’s 
father (who had arrived from Germany the pre- 
vious night), Sandro, my wife, and self. Mr. 
Melton had the little orphan taken to his own 
home, and Sandro bore back with him to Italy 
the few relics which the deceased had left, the 
small fortune which had been hers being left at 
interest lill the child came of age. 

Sandro had preserved a taciturn silence con- 
cerning the strange part he had enacted, and 
beyond a few words of thanks as he took his 
leave an hour after the obsequies, he spoke noth- 
ing all the time. After a space of a few weeks, 
however, we were startled and shocked by re- 
ceiving one morning the following extraordinary 
confession, written in the shaky hand of the old 
priest who had addressed me a few weeks 
before : — 


176 


SANDRO 


‘ They tell me, signore, that I have not long 
to live ; they tell me that I have been mad ; that 
it was not last night I returned to Molino, but 
many nights, many weeks ago. I — but what 
matters it ? Let the good father write down my 
words. My breath comes short and the light 
grows dim. Let the good padre write it down. 

‘ It was I, signore, who took his life — the 
artist, your friend. Since when he came to our 
mountain village and saw my Monica, and took 
her away, I have been mad. Yes, it is true ; 
the good father is right. But not now am I so. 
No. I have confessed, and the peace of our 
holy Church is within me. Yes, signore, it was 
I. You see I had loved her ; since a boy when 
we sported together in the sun I had loved — 
nay, I had worshipped her, even as they say our 
great Dante worshipped the girl Beatrice while 
yet a boy. VVe grew up together, and because 
I would not leave Molino and her, and go up 
in the hills to the padrone’s, they called me 
idle, and Giulia, her mother, forbade her to see 
me ; and Monica — ah, Monica too — said I was 
bad and lazy, and she turned away from me. So 
I went to the padrone’s, and worked, and worked, 
and got money, and said in my heart I would 
177 


12 


SANDRO 


grow rich and marry Monica. I made her grow 
fond of me; I brought her presents from the 
town, and then sometimes she would let me 
kiss her. One day last year, just before vin- 
tage time, we were together and I asked her. 
Yes, I asked her to be my wife. She would 
not speak ; she was silent and turned her head 
away; but when I asked her if I might hope, 
she gave me a smile, and I went away with a 
song in my heart. Yes, even though I had seen 
him — for as we were parting he came down the 
village and saw us at the gate. He took off his 
hat to her and asked which was Giulia’s house, 
as they told him at Cori he could get lodging 
there. Monica went in with him, but I walked 
home to the padrone’s, and the song in my 
heart rose to my lips. For I thought not of 
him ; no, only of Monica and my blessed hopes. 
It was vintage time, and it was many days before 
I went down to Molino again. The house Giulia 
had taken when Matteo died, and she had let the 
farm, was through the village, and as I passed 
along the people looked at me and then at each 
other, and I wondered. And old Giulia too was 
strange ; she would not say where Monica was, 
only that she was well cared for, and that I must 
178 


SANDRO 


not think more of her. Then I knew — all at 
once it came to me. She had gone away with 
the artist ! I rushed outside. Pietro Lundi 
told me they had run away two days before, but 
none knew whither. From that moment I was 
not the same. Holy Madonna ! I could not 
help it ; it was the fiend. * It was the fiend that 
sent me after them — I could not help it. 

‘ For weeks I went hither and thither, but no 
one had seen them. At last I got to Florence, 
and there I learned that they had been married 
at your English church, and had gone to Venice. 
It was a clue. Since then — it seems years 
ago — I have traced them from Venice to Paris, 
and then to London. There, one day, after 
many weeks, I thought I saw him. It was near 
the church, but he turned a corner, and though 
I ran I did not see him. But something told 
me I should see him again there, and that was 
why, signore, I bought the chalks and drew pic- 
tures on the pathway. I was always fond of 
drawing, and the people they liked my pictures 
and gave me money, more than I needed. And 
when I had done them I would stand up and 
watch and watch for him. At last he came ; I 
saw him, he was coming past. Quickly I stooped 
179 


SANDRO 


and rubbed out a view of Molino, lest he should 
recognise it. Then you came up and spoke to 
me. I knew then he was your friend. He too 
spoke to me ; but I trembled and was afraid to 
reply, and hid my face. But when you were 
gone I got up and followed you. I saw where 
you entered. I waite*d and watched. It was 
dark and rainy, and there were no people. I 
would do it there ; why wait till he got home ? 
I would do it there, and then I would go to the 
house and kill her. Ah, I was mad, else why 
did my heart jump for joy as he came out alone ? 
He did not see me. He uttered no cry. I 
lifted him up and threw him on one side. Then 
I went tc'his house. They told me she was 
gone. All night, many nights I waited, but she 
did not return. Two weeks after the house was 
emptied. Then it flashed to me that she was 
gone home — home to Molino. I had money, 
and in three days was at the village. She was 
not there, but I knew she would come, and I 
waited. Giulia was sick, and I made myself 
kind to her. When the letter came the good 
father read it to her, and she said, “ Let Guido 
go,” for my name was not Sandro, signore, and 
the fiend was in my heart again as I hurried 
i8o 


SANDRO 


back in the train to England. I grow weak ; it 
is hard to breathe ; but I must finish. I did not 
know it was your house. The signorina, she 
showed me the room. I felt in my breast for 
the stiletto, for she might still be living, and I 
entered ; but when I saw her, so still and white 
and beautiful, the Blessed Madonna came and 
cleansed my soul, the fiend went out from me. 
Dead ! She was dead ! Ah, God ! forgive — 
forgive — I ’ 

Here the letter broke off, and as I read the 
few words added by the priestly amanuensis my 
eyes grew dim, and I threw the document down 
and shook myself, for there was beyond the 
horror a something in that revelation of human 
frailty which had nearly unmanned me. 


i8i 


Assyria in London 


I 

Mr. Ferrars was evidently very busy. His 
pen scratched its way down sheet after sheet of 
quarto, pausing here and there while its owner 
referred to a book of notes beside, him, or 
thought out, with puckered brow, the symmetry 
of a sentf^nce which refused to shape itself on 
the instant. At such moments — and they were 
rare, for he was a ready writer — you might 
have seen that Mr. Ferrars was a man of about 
thirty, with a countenance which, if not hand- 
some, was at least striking. Though lined with 
thought, it was very youthful, and the dark, 
dreamy eyes and sensitive mouth suggested a 
nature in which feeling was equally allied with 
intellect. When, six months before, he had 
been chosen out of some two hundred other 
candidates for the post of curator to the museum 
182 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


and art gallery at Workborough, people had 
said ‘ How young ! ’ But the committee who 
had chosen him were quite satisfied, and perhaps 
had their own reasons for rejecting older and 
more experienced men. At any rate, the new 
curator became very popular. He secured 
wonderful loan collections, compiled a new 
catalogue as full of anecdote and story as of 
numbered curios, procured Sunday openings, 
and now and again delivered free popular lec- 
tures in the Town Hall, such as made ancient 
days live again and forgotten ages deliver up 
their wonders. On one of these productions he 
was now engaged in his lodging near the British 
Museum, and ‘Assyria in London^ was the 
theme which made his eyes glow and the words 
flow fast from his pen. 

Mr. Ferrars had rented a first-floor back, and 
his open window let in a soft breeze and an 
occasional sigh from the aged elm-tree which 
lent a feeble verdancy to the grey outlook. He 
had asked for the first-floor front, but that was 
occupied by a young gentleman who had ar- 
rived a few days before — ‘A strange young 
man, sir,’ his landlady had said, ‘ always indoors 
readin’, or playin’ the pianer ; but maybe the 

183 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


music will not disturb yer, sir, — he plays very 
soft-like, and not as some do — fit to split the 
hammers and crack the keys.’ But Mr. Ferrars 
had been there two days, and had thought 
nothing more of his neighbour in the next rooms, 
which, for all he heard from them, might have 
been tenantless. 

As he wrote on, apparently heedless of the 
failing light, the silence was complete, except 
for his pen, which, wearing under so much lore, 
scratched yet louder, till the writer paused and 
looked at it with a frown. Then he drew it 
forth, and selected a new nib, bent for another 
start. But he paused with suspended hand. 
Then he leaned back, half turning his head in 
the direction of the sound which had just struck 
his ear — the soft notes of a piano — a weird, 
sweet melody from the touch of a perfect player, 
rising and falling with infinite expression, but sad, 
even mournful, in its cadences. 

The light crept out of the room, and its 
features became dim and shadowy, but the 
music went on, and the listener sat there in ap- 
preciative silence. A wild, passionate piece of 
Chopin’s died away, and then came a low noc- 
turne, like the calm of resignation after the pas- 
184 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


sion of despair. This gave place, in its turn, to 
another melody, the first notes of which made 
the curator half jump from his chair. He fell 
back again, and, though he was not given to 
tears, his eyes grew humid as he hearkened. 

‘ Bah ! ’ he said, suddenly, as he rose to his 
feet and shook himself. ‘ I thought I had for- 
gotten her, and yet, how that air brings it all 
back ! She only played it once, I only saw her 
twice, and we barely spake together. Strange 
that she should have moved me so ! Confound 
his thrumming — I wish he would stop ! ’ 

It was only one of Mendelssohn’s wordless 
songs, which tell so much — such as a young 
girl of sixteen had played to him years before 
in the old home at Penzance ; but as the listener 
sank again into his chair the music suddenly 
ceased, and there was a long sigh — or was it 
the old tree opposite ? 

It must have been, for the next moment a 
door slammed, and the musician went down- 
stairs and out into the street. 

Mr. Ferrars bent forward again, and took up 
his pen, but his thoughts refused to be focussed 
on Assyria, or perhaps it was too dark to write. 
He reached for his matches, but instead of the 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


gas he lit a cigar, and sat staring vacantly at the 
elm-tree, which heaved another sigh, and some 
papers fluttered on to the floor. The dreamer 
absently blew a ring, and as he watched it widen, 
perhaps it drew his thoughts outwards again, for 
he became aware of the sharp, double knock of 
an approaching postman, which chained his at- 
tention to it, till the old house itself rang with 
the summons. A minute afterwards the follow- 
ing letter was brought to him : 

‘ St. Frederics, July 26. 

‘ Dear Ferrars, — Our honeymoon is over, and 
we are located in our new home. We returned 
from Roding on l^esday, and, having to change 
at Workborough, we missed a train on the chance 
of seeing you at your big curiosity shop, but you 
were non est. However, this is to tell you that I 
am coming up to town some time next week on im- 
portant business, and should like your advice on a 
very serious matter. I shall probably bring Clara 
with me, and we will stay with the Rickards’. Drop 
me a line there, and say when and where I can see 
you. ‘ Ever yours, 

‘ ROLLO M ANTON. 

‘ P. S. — I have got over my ducking, and Clara 
says I look better for having been drowned ! ’ 

186 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


Mr. Ferrars laid the letter down and pursued 
his smoking, though it was now quite dark and 
a chill night air blew in from the garden. At 
last he shivered and rose to shut the window, 
noticing the while that some one had stumbled 
on the stairs. The next moment his door handle 
turned and the some one entered. 

‘ Oh, I beg your pardon ! I have entered the 
wrong room in the dark. How absurd ! ^ And 
the intruder laughingly backed out, repeating 
his apologies. 

Mr. Ferrars left the window. 

^ If you will permit me to say it, I am very 
glad of the error, since it allows me to pass a 
word with one whose music so delighted me 
this evening. Will you not stay a minute ? I 
am longing to talk with some one. My name 
is Ferrars.’ 

The invitation was winningly spoken, and the 
stranger, after a moment’s hesitation, consented 
to stay a few minutes, but intercepted the other’s 
hand as he raised it to the chandelier. 

^ Pray don’t light up, Mr. Ferrars. I have a 
fancy for this semi-darkness, with the dim glare 
of London over the housetops. Thanks, but I 
never smoke. No, I like it much — pray do.’ 
187 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


Mr. Ferrars laid his cigar down when the 
match went out. Its brief light had served to 
show his guest was of medium height, had good 
but pale and rather wasted features, which were 
not improved by the pair of blue glasses which 
completely covered his eyes. He spoke slowly, 
and his voice was deep, but clear. The con- 
versation opened on music, but quickly turned 
off into other subjects of apparently mutual in- 
terest. There were few things Mr. Norman — 
for such was his name — could not talk about, 
but it seemed to please him most when he could 
listen to the other as he descanted enthusiasti- 
cally on the theocratic glories of the East. Mr. 
Ferrars had a rich voice, pleasant to listen to, 
and when he took up his cigar and struck an- 
other light, the young visitor furtively removed 
his glasses to catch a clearer glimpse of his 
flushed face and brilliant eyes. He did not 
notice the movement, and puffed on for a mo- 
ment in silence. Then he removed his cigar, 
but instead of speaking he sneezed, and another 
shiver went through him. He rose with a re- 
mark that the gas might make it less chilly. Mr. 
Norman assented, but said good-night. 

‘Must you go? Good-night then. I am 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


extremely glad to have had a chat with you. 
Come in again to-morrow night, if — tchew 1 
— believe I have caught a cold. Gone ! What 
an interesting young fellow he is. Talks — 
tchew ! — talks as well as he listens ; and there 
is something winning about him which you feel 
even when he is silent. Eleven o’clock — the 
deuce ! ’ 

II 

Mr. Ferrars was not seen at the Assyrian gal- 
leries next day. He was lying, very hot and 
feverish and miserable, on his couch, unable to 
do anything save to curse his ill-luck. He got 
worse towards night and sought his bed with a 
groan, not so much at his physical discomfiture 
as at the prospect of being laid up for a week in 
a London lodging-house. 

The doctor came and went, and Mr. Ferrars 
was alone in his bedroom in company with a 
feverish cold. 

Mrs. Raddles was very good, but she smelt of 
gin, and the patient was glad for her to leave 
the room. But the hours were very long, and 
he could not sleep, so that he was equally glad 
when she returned to administer his medicine. 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


^Mr. Norman, sir, that has the front rooms, 
is very anxious to know how you are. He’s 
waiting now, sir, at the door, and seems quite 
troubled like. I asked him if he’d like to come 
in and see yer, but he stepped back an’ said no, 
he’d rather not disturb yer. Two spoonfuls — 
it don’t seem a pleasant drink, sir, but he’s a 
rare doctor ; he cured ’ 

‘Thanks — thanks,’ gasped Mr. Ferrars, turn- 
ing his head aside as he returned her the glass. 
‘ Ask Mr. Norman to come and see me this 
evening, if he will.’ 

An hour later there was a gentle knock at 
the door, and the sick curator murmured a faint 
‘ Come in,’ turning his face to the door as Mr. 
Norman shyly entered. 

‘I am so sorry,’ he stammered, as he came 
up and pressed the hot hand stretched out to 
him. The kindly words and the grasp of the 
cool fingers were grateful to the sufferer. 

‘ So am I,’ said he laconically, as the hand 
gently withdrew itself. ‘ But it’s kind of you to 
come. Sit down — there, where I can see you. 
There are twelve hundred roses on this wall- 
paper.’ 

‘Is it so monotonous?’ said Mr. Norman, 
190 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


half smiling at the remark, ‘ Cannot you sleep ? 
So much counting ought to be quite soporific.’ 

Mr. Ferrars looked at the youthful figure in 
its loose suit of grey tweed, and then long and 
intently at the visitor’s pale face. ^ Talk to me 
— your voice is soothing,’ said he. ‘Tell me 
some news — read me the paper — anything.’ 

Thereupon Mr. Norman rose, and drew his 
chair up to the bedside. He first arranged the 
rumpled pillows, then, reseating himself, read 
out the stately English of a ‘Standard’ leading 
article. He came to the end and began another 
on the political situation, reading with less ex- 
pression and in a drowsy monotone. It had 
the effect he perhaps desired, for ere he had got 
to the last period Mr. Ferrars had gone off into 
a sound though a restless sleep. The visitor 
rose and looked long at the slumberer ; then 
silently he crossed the room to lower the gas. 
In doing so his eyes rested on an envelope 
which lay on the dressing-table. He caught 
his breath, and as he took it his hand trembled 
so violently that he had to hold on to the table to 
prevent his falling. Then the blood flew back to 
his face, his chest heaved, and he shook his shoul- 
ders as if freeing himself from an odious burden. 

191 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


' Thank God — thank God ! ’ 

The words came in a hoarse whisper, and he 
stood breathing hard as the surprise on his face 
gave way to gladness. Quickly but silently he 
sought his own apartments, where he paced to 
and fro like a wild thing. At last he snatched 
his glasses away, sank down on a chair, and 
wept heartily. But when he looked up again it 
was not sorrow that danced in his eyes. 


Ill 

On the afternoon of the third day Mr. Ferrars 
felt well enough to leave his room, and despite 
the injunctions of Dr. O’Fea, he dressed himself 
and sought the cosy chair in his sitting-room. 
It was a warm, sultry afternoon, and the dusty 
leaves of the elm-tree moved feebly in the sun- 
light as if, like the sparrows which lazily chirped 
in its branches, it was overcome by the prevail- 
ing heat. The curator’s eyes drank in the light, 
and he smiled in that long satisfied way con- 
valescents have. 

‘ Leon will be quite surprised. Dear fellow ! 
I wish he would consent to spend more time 
192 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


with me. Only an hour or two each night — 
why should he be so fond of his books and 
piano ? There he goes . . . // Trovatore. How 
he does rattle through it ! He seems to have 
forsworn the minor key, and yet he is triste and 
silent enough at times. Ah, Leon, lad, I love 
thee with all thy humours. Gay as a lark — 
sad as an owl by turns. What mystery is it be- 
hind thee? or art thou only another artistic 
problem ? ’ 

It will be gathered from this soliloquy that 
the two boarders had become, not friendly 
alone, but greatly attached to each other during 
the last four days. Mr. Ferrars’ heart had quite 
gone out to the young student with the soft 
voice and winning ways — with his strange aL 
ternations of gaiety and sadness, his mingled 
assurance and shyness, his fresh msouciance^ 
playing behind all his knowledge, and lending 
to dry learning an odd touch of youth which 
would sometimes fetch a smile to the curator’s 
brown eyes, just as he had smiled when the 
student had pettishly objected to his surname 
and desired to be called I.eon. He could not 
have told you why he so liked the young fellow, 
why he sometimes felt a thrill of exquisite feeling 

H 193 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


as he listened to his voice or watched the play 
of his mobile features. Such analyses are im- 
possible, the sources of feeling being a thousand 
minute capillaries running down to our remotest 
past, through the long, dark avenues of memory, 
through all that we have been, so that what we 
feel is a great mystery to us, though we know it 
by many names. 

Perhaps some such thoughts as these passed 
through Mr. Ferrars’ mind, for presently his 
eyes closed and he began to nod — as philoso- 
phisers are apt to do in the dog days. An hour 
went by before he opened his eyes, which he 
did slowly, and continued gazing before him 
like one whose mind is still in the grasp of a 
dream. 

‘To awake even as she stooped and kissed 
me ! ’ he murmured. ‘ After following her 
through pass and ravine, through wood and 
daisied field — her and that sweet melody. To 
overtake her and fall at her feet, to see her gaze 
down at me with those wonderful eyes — and 
then — ah ! cruel illusion, to lift me up and drop 
me so ! ’ 

‘ It at least dropped you into a comfortable 
chair ! ’ 


194 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


^What, Leon, my Orpheus ! I believe it was 
your magic lute that threaded its notes into my 
poor dream just now.’ 

‘And took you through “wood and daisied 
field.” ’ 

‘ Aye, even as Ariel’s tabor led Ferdinand.’ 

‘ A pity Miranda’s kiss should bring so rude a 
wakening.’ 

‘What’s the matter, Leon? You seem out of 
sorts.’ 

‘Perhaps I, too, have had a dream,’ said 
Leon, with trembling lip. 

‘ And a wakening worse than mine, I should 
say.’ 

‘At least, more bitter.’ 

‘ Tell it me.’ 

‘ No, I cannot do that — I have come to tell 
you something else.’ 

‘ What is it, Leon ? ’ 

‘ I am going away to-morrow.’ 

‘No; don’t tell me that,’ cried Mr. Ferrars, 
in real distress ; ‘ stay a little longer. Must you 
really go ? ’ 

‘Really, Mr. Ferrars.’ 

‘ Then I shall don a hair shirt and live in a 
cave.’ 


195 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


‘ Such an Anthony had better forget his 
Miranda first.’ 

Ferrars rose and put his hands affectionately 
on his friend’s shoulder. ^ Leon, do you know 
why it is I love you so — even as David loved 
Jonathan?’ 

‘ No.’ 

‘Nor I. But when you are gone I shall miss 
you more than I dare think, more ’ 

‘ More than you would Miranda ? ’ 

‘ She is but an old memory, Leon, revived 
the other night by a forgotten tune ; but this is 
trifling, and your humour is flippant.’ 

He turned away and walked to the window ; 
Leon, with a sudden change of manner, followed 
him and placed his hand on his arm. 

‘ Forgive me, Mr. Ferrars, if I hurt you at all. 
I can stay two or three days longer if you like, 
but there is nothing to keep me here now, and 
to stay because you would miss me would be too 
absurd.’ 

‘ Right, Leon ; it would ! I will try to bury 
thee in the ruins of Assyria. Here comes 
the doctor and a lecture. Away, friend, and 
turn on some slow music to give to my defence 
the right touch of pathos.’ 

196 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


IV 

The curator was in two more days so much 
himself again that he asked his friend to accom- 
pany him out somewhere. But Leon objected 
to a drive before evening — he would go then 
with pleasure. At sunset they went accordingly 
in a hired landau up Oxford-street, through 
Bays water to Ealing, and back by South Ken- 
sington. Here the exhibition sprang a thought 
on Mr. Ferrars. 

‘ Let us go in, Leon, and see a little life. Re- 
turn at ten,’ he added to the coachman, and the 
twain passed through the stiles into the grounds. 
The curator drew his companion’s arm in his, 
and they walked gently about, silentTor the most 
part, but both enjoying the brilliant scene : the 
stirring music, the ten thousand lights bedecking 
the grounds and festooning the warm air in all 
directions ; the gay, ever-moving throng saunter- 
ing through an hour of life with that awful aban- 
don which crowds have when gathered to the 
feasts of sound and colour. The two friends de- 
livered themselves willingly enough to the sen- 
suous influence of the scene, and discovered an 
odd delight in merely losing themselves in the 
197 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


shifting mass of humanity, threading and winding 
their aimless way till Mr. Ferrars, still weak from 
his cold, began to feel tired, and murmured a 
wish to watch the good stream from its banks. 

Near one of the kiosks they found two front 
seats. The curator sat half round so that he 
could see the face of his friend, whose eyes, 
withdrawn from the crowd, were downcast, and 
whose thoughts were turned inwards again. As 
Leon sat thus, tracing figures with the point of 
his stick, something trickled from beneath his 
glasses which sent a queer thrill through the 
watcher. 

^ A penny for them, Leon,’ he said suddenly. 

Leon bit his lip, and his face reddened. Then 
he tossed his head and laughed. 

‘ I was grieving for Pharaoh’s mother’s mother. 
Give the penny to that cigarette machine, and 
wait for the receipt. I like the smell of tobacco, 
and you have not smoked all the evening.’ He 
bent forward and worked his stick with renewed 
interest. 

Mr. Ferrars drew a cigar from his case and 
lit it. Till two minutes ago his companion had 
been the soul of gaiety, and the transition was 
inexplicable to him. 


198 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


' It shows very kind feeling for the old lady,’ 
he said at last. ^ Are you writing her epitaph ? ’ 
— looking down at the shapeless hieroglyphics. 
* What on earth is the matter, Leon ? Are you 
ill?’ 

Two gaitered shoes had stopped by Leon’s 
stick, and his eyes had travelled up the figure to 
the face. He uttered a low cry and fell back 
trembling. But the gentleman, who had a lady 
on his arm, was looking, not at him, but at Mr. 
Ferrars, who, following Leon’s gaze, uttered an 
exclamation and rose to his feet. 

* Why, Manton ! where ’ 

' It A Ferrars ! I thought it was ! Glad to 
meet you again, old fellow. I got your note. 
This is my wife. Clara — Mr. Ferrars.’ 

After the hand-shaking and some necessary 
commonplaces Mr. Ferrars turned round to look 
for Leon, who had risen with him. But he was 
nowhere to be seen. Annoyed, but concluding 
that the runaway would return in a few minutes, 
the curator proposed that they should all sit 
down. 

^ And tell me about that adventure,’ he added. 
‘You had a near miss of it, had you not? ’ 

‘ They say I was dead for an hour, and I had 
199 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


certainly gone through all the pleasures of drown- 
ing,’ laughed Mr. Manton. ‘ They brought me 
round by artificial respiration. How did it hap- 
pen? Well, I hardly know. We were on the 
river, Clara and I. She caught sight of a farm 
and conceived a sudden desire for a glass of 
milk. I, like a dutiful knight, jumped ashore 
and went to fetch it, while she, like a lady whose 
wish is law, reclined on the cushions and went to 
sleep. How the boat became unfastened I don’t 
know ; I never tied a rope more securely in my life. 
Anyway, after being delayed some minutes at the 
farm, I returned through the wood to find the boat 
floating gracefully out to sea. I ran down the 
bank as well as the trees would let me, shouting 
fit to waken the seven sleepers — I did, indeed, 
dear; you can’t deny what you never heard. 
Yes, Ferrars, Clara slept on as peacefully as she 
did in her cradle, and the river quietly floated 
her barque out to the sea. All I could do at 
last was to jump in and swim after it. A stern 
chase is a long chase, but I had got pretty close up 
when, as luck would have it, I caught the cramp. 
I gave a parting shout, and then sank ; but Clara 
heard it, and started up just in time to see me 
disappear, or she had been twice widowed. She 


200 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


rowed back, and caught hold of me just as I was 
sinking the third time. Some fishermen had seen 
us, and put off to the rescue, a medical student, 
who was staying at one of their cottages, accom- 
panying them. Had it not been for that young- 
ster’s science I should have been left for dead. 
When Clara went next day to thank him a second 
time he was gone away, and we have not since 
heard of him. However, all’s well that ends well^ 
old friend. Why, it must be five years since we 
last met at Penzance.’ 

* Yes,’ said Ferrars. ‘Your family stayed with 
us two nights, and you had with you a certain 

Miss — Miss ’ 

‘ Miss Chester? the governess? ’ 

‘ Yes ; what has become of her? ’ 

‘ I really couldn’t tell you ; she left us shortly 
afterwards.’ 

‘ Have you not seen her since ? ’ 

But Mr. Manton rose tp his feet without 
replying to the question, and after arranging 
an appointment for the next day, the friends 
separated. Ferrars lingered about, waiting for 
Leon, till near ten o’clock, and then he left the 
grounds. He found his landau waiting near the 
exit, and was driven rapidly home. But no 


201 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


Leon was there. He had been in with another 
gentleman, but had left almost immediately with 
his luggage. On his table the curator found 
this note : — 

‘ Farewell. Think sometimes of Leon.’ 

That was all, and Mr. Ferrars sat down to 
wonder what mystery it was that lurked behind 
the strange being who had won his affections so 
unaccountably and whose absence now brought 
a sudden heaviness to his heart. 

Next day the solitary curator tried to pick up 
the lost threads of ^ Assyria in London.’ 

He did make some little progress, and 
might have made more only for the air running 
through his brain and hsCunting him now with a 
double memory. On the third day, however, 
he put the last period to the lecture, and as he 
rose with a sigh of relief the maid knocked 
and brought him a telegram. He opened it 
wonderingly. 

‘ Have found my medical student and sent him to 
you ; he will tell you why. — Manton.’ 

As he read the message through for the third 
time a cab drove up and the maid entered 
again with a card on the tray. Mr. Ferrars 
uttered an exclamation when he read the name. 


202 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


‘ Show the gentleman up,’ said he, with a 
new light in his eyes. iLe paced to and fro 
impatiently till the door opened and a young 
gentleman entered. 

* Mr. Ferrars, I believe?’ 

‘ That is my name. Won’t you take a 
chair ? ’ 

* Thanks. I have been sent to you by a Mr. 
Manton, and I have one or two questions to ask 
you which, though extraordinary, are not imper- 
tinent under the peculiar circumstances of the 
case.’ And then began a conversation which 
evidently engendered mutual satisfaction, for the 
two gentlemen separated half-an-hour later on 
the most cordial footing. 

V 

Next day Mr. Ferrars returned to Work- 
borough. At the end of a week, however, he 
was again on his way to London, and in his 
hand was a letter which he read a score of 
times, though it only contained these four 
words : — 

‘I am better — come. 

He was met at Euston by the same young 
203 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


gentleman who had visited him a week before. 
A hansom conveyed them to a quiet leafy 
corner of Hampstead, and stopped at a quaint 
old cottage half hidden in trees and fronted with 
a little unkempt lawn, from the centre of which 
rose a weather-beaten statue of Flora. 

‘ These are our lodgings,’ said Mr. Ferrars’ 
companion. ‘ If you will enter by that open 
window I will send Mr. Norman to you,’ and he 
smilingly waved the visitor to the French win- 
dow which looked on the tangled lawn. 

Mr. Ferrars entered, and stood with his eyes 
strangely aglow, waiting for the door to open. 
His suspense was soon ended. Footsteps 
approached, and paused an instant outside. 
Then the handle turned, and a young lady of 
singular beauty entered the room. Her face 
was slightly flushed, and her eyes drooped as 
they met those of the curator, who looked a 
moment at the short wavy hair and the deepen- 
ing flush, as if his pleasure was too great for 
speech. 

‘ Leon / ’ 

She stood in silence. 

‘You bade me come, and I am here, Leon. 
Have you not a word for me ? ’ 

204 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


She looked up again, still silent ; but her eyes 
told all he wished to know, and in another 
moment she was in his arms. 

‘ Can you ever forgive me ? » she said, as they 
sat together on the couch, hand in hand, and 
regarding each other in the most satisfied way in 
the world. 

* For what, my Leonora?’ 

* For that dreadful disguise, and for that 
which led me to don it Yet I did not mean 
to be wicked — I did not indeed. I could not 
help the spirit of mischief which prompted me 
to untie the rope. But let me tell you how it 
was. You shall share with Adrian the whole 
truth ; and as he has forgiven me, so you will 
too, I think, when I am done. No, no — wait 
till you hear all ; I am not the “ earthly para- 
gon ” your imagination paints me, or I had 
been above the littleness of a practical joke on 
the good lady who has taken my place in Rollo 
Manton’s life. You don’t understand? Did he 
never tell you ? How secret he kept it ! But it 
is easier to withdraw from a secret engagement 
than from one openly declared. God forgive 
me, but I feel very bitterly about him at times. 
Yes, we were engaged until as recently as three 

205 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


months ago. Last May he wrote asking me to 
release him, urging the objections of his family 
to the union, and other difficulties. I had 
never really loved him — I know it now — yet 
he professed such a devotion, and I liked him 
so much that I had no misgivings whatever 
about our happiness ; and when he asked for his 
freedom again it was with great pain ^indeed 
that I returned his ring and presents. I could 
not understand ; I felt — I don’t know how I 
felt until a month ago, when I read in the news- 
papers that he had married a wealthy young 
widow who had gone to live at St. Frederics. 
Then I knew why he had asked for his liberty. 
My heart grew very bitter ; I felt hot with the 
insult, and it rankled within me for many days, 
making me very miserable and disgusted with 
everything in general and men in particular. 
Don’t smile, for I was really in a grievous state. 
When our college vacation came I joined my 
brother (who had some reading to do) in renting 
part of a cottage at Yellowhove, a little fishing 
village at the mouth of the Ripple. There my 
mind soon recovered its spring — my nature its 
buoyancy. Adrian’s high spirits, the perfect 
scenic and social change, the sportive winds, the 
206 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


ever-tossing waves — all helped me, not alone 
to forget, but to rejoice in my freedom. 

‘ I did not know that they too were in the 
neighbourhood, staying at some friends’ at 
Roding, a mile up the river; and I was as- 
tonished one day as I was reading in a little 
wood, which was one of my favourite haunts, 
whilst Adrian was studying, to see them pass 
me in a boat. They did not see me, and I 
watched Rollo row to the side, jump ashore, 
and then walk through the wood to a farm on 
its outskirts. I watched her too, as she lay 
back among the pillows with closed eyes, the 
picture of indolent obesity. I felt no jealousy, 
but only a little amused contempt as I gazed at 
her. Then the demon of mischief seized hold 
of me ; she seemed so sleek and comfortable, 
and it would be good to see her start up to 
find herself in the open stream with only her 
own very round arms to row her to the bank. 
I crept silently up, and, untying the rope, 
pushed the boat gently away from the bank. 
She did not notice it, but floated away with her 
eyes closed, till it occurred to me that she was 
asleep. When Rollo came up, and ran shout- 
ing down the bank without rousing her, this 
207 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


ioipression was confirmed, and then I repented 
of my rash trick, for the boat was gliding rapidly 
down to the sea. But there was no real 
danger ; the fishermen would see the boat and 
would put off and overtake it, should its pas- 
senger slumber on. So that I ran after Rollo, 
as much inclined to laugh as to cry, till I saw 
him jump from the bank and swim after the 
little craft, which, turning round and round, 
had swept into the sea, and was fast receding 
from the shore. Then I stood still, rather 
frightened. And when, as he had nearly reached 
it, he threw up his arms and sank, a darkness 
came over me, and I fell to the ground. 

‘ When I came round I barely had strength 
to walk; but I got as far as the village, and 
walked up to the group which stood at the door 
of our cottage. They told me he was dead. 
Oh, I shall never forget the horror which came 
over me ! The men noticed it, and as I 
staggered away I looked back and saw their 
eyes on me. “ It was you who did it,” they 
seemed to say, and I fled the scene, fear bear- 
ing me on, till I reached the railway station 
three miles away. I booked to London — I 
had money with me and some jewels — and I 
208 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


took lodgings near Brompton Road. But the 
people, looked suspiciously at me, and it oc- 
curred to me that I might attract less notice 
if I was disguised in male attire. How I 
managed it I need not tell you ; but next 
night, unseen by any one, I disappeared. My 
altered appearance and manner had quite 
transformed me, and I felt, as I proved, a 
perfect disguise. Then I took the rooms at 
Bloomsbury where I met you. I only went 
out after dark, and lived in daily fear such as 
they only know who have committed, even un- 
wittingly, ^ a great sin. After a few days I 
made a resolution which calmed me somewhat 
— I resolved to write to my brother and confess 
everything. The idea quieted me so that I 
found an odd satisfaction in living on from day 
to day in view of the prospect. There was a 
good collection of books in the room, and 
several volumes of music. With these I passed 
the days till the night I entered your room in 
mistake. Some of the rest you know. But 
you don’t know how strangely I felt when I 
came into your presence ; how on the second 
night I saw his handwriting and monogram on 
an envelope, and discovered that he was alive ; 
209 


14 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


and how, as day followed day, my sudden 
affection for you grew into a love so strong 
that I feared at last to approach your presence, 
lest you should see through my masculine 
manner and speech, which the woman in me 
made so difficult to simulate. How wretched, 
and yet how happy, I was ! That day when I 
entered, and found you asleep, I touched your 
forehead with my lips. Yes, it was I who 
kissed you, and it was my heart that grew 
bitter when I gathered from your mutterings 
that you loved another. I did not know then 
that the creature of your dreams was none 
other than myself ; and when I did learn it 
can you wonder at my misery when I knew 
that I was the object of your heart, but could 
never let you know it? 

‘That night, at the Exhibition, I resolved 
on flight ; the mingled joy and pain were too 
intolerable — I would leave you. You remember 
how I disappeared when they came upon the 
scene. I made for the South Kensington sta- 
tion, and there I ran against my brother. He 
did not know me, but I clung to him and told 
him the truth. Poor Adrian ! he had been 
searching for me everywhere. You know how 


210 


ASSYRIA IN LONDON 


ill I became when he took me to his rooms ; 
how, in a fit of half-delirious despair, I cried out 
your name. My brother heard it and happened 
to mention it to Mr. Manton when they met. 
Then Mr. Manton remembered your conversa- 
tion about Miss Chester, and sent Adrian, who 
was distracted about my condition, to see you. 
And I suppose when you — when you ’ 

‘ When I knew that poor Miranda was lying 
sick of love for one she had parted with for 
ever, I sent the message which saved her for me. 
It was the old romance all through. I was fond 
of Leon because there was something about him, 
maugre his glasses and assumed voice, which 
suggested the Miss Chester of earlier days. I 
see it all now.’ 

She rose and went to the piano, and as she 
played through the old song she looked round 
at him with such words in her eyes that they 
drew him to her, and without ceasing her playing 
she lifted her lips for the gentle punctuation. 

Mr. Ferrars did his duty. 


2II 


The Vicar of Wrocksley 


He still lives at Wrocksley, though the cross in 
the churchyard says he died on a day years ago, 
and the villagers, who recall that day with head- 
shaking, say so too. But a life cannot be ac- 
counted dead which reverberates on in other 
lives as the old vicar’s does ; and the people of 
Wrocksley, looking into their hearts and seeing 
the gentle, white-haired presence there, feel that 
in his own way he lingers yet among them, and 
they are willing enough to have it so, remember- 
ing what he was. It is one of those afterglows 
which large natures often leave, by which those 
who knew them in their mortal shining may still 
find some light to live by. Yet it was hardly of 
the vicar’s seeking, any more than the love was 
which made such aching, one autumn day, under 
bodice and vest at Wrocksley ; and if indeed 
he craved anything at the last, more than other 


212 


THE VICAR OF VVROCKSLEY 


guerdon, it was the rest which God had brought 
him — that, and no more. 

So said old Peter the sexton, whose daughter 
Hannah had been the vicar’s housekeeper ; and 
in his walnut visage was the look of a man who 
knew all he was saying. Others, seeing it, and 
not sharing the things which his memory held, 
only shook their heads, thinking of the opinion 
he had that there were none so happy as those 
who rested so, and that there were no sleeping- 
places like those he dug with his own spade. 
For it was Peter’s boast that he had bedded 
down the people of Wrocksley and covered 
them up comfortably for half a century or more, 
and that never a one of them had known ache 
or pain, or even the edge of a sorrow, unless it 
was Betty Griggle, who had left a stocking be- 
hind her, and was seen sometimes by fearsome 
folk in her roofless cottage, seeking it. But 
Peter’s heart often pulled against his philosophy, 
which was a personal growth, born of much 
grave-digging ; and when his thoughts get busy 
with other days, and he remembers the figure in 
them, his rheumy eyes take a softer look, and 
his regrets give a sigh to the breeze, for the 
vicar’s sake, lie he never so still under the cedar- 
213 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


tree. And if Peter pauses in such moments by 
an old green wicket to gaze down a leafy vista, 
as if to a Past it led to, it is perhaps because he 
can recall better there the few happenings which 
make up our story — if so it may be called, 
which is little more than a reminiscence, scarce 
worth the reading, some might say — of an ob- 
scure country parson, who lived alone with a 
dead hope, and found it the best of company, 
so long as it was * a sweet sorrow ’ merely, and 
not a burden more than a heart could carry. 

It was an almost forgotten circumstance at 
Wrocksley, that years ago, not long after his 
induction to the living, the vicar and Miss 
Rawksley, of the manor-house, had been much 
together in parochial work; especially during 
the dark, epidemic time, which had kept Peter 
so busy, and which, towards its close, almost 
proved fatal to Miss Rawksley herself. But it 
was towards her recovery, before health had 
done all its duty, and when the arm of another 
was still good to lean on, that she and the vicar 
would be seen oftenest in company, either in the 
manor-house garden, or in the long lime avenue 
which led from it to the wicket by the church. 
If the trees therein could be made to talk, like 
214 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


those which Dante saw, they might repeat what 
they heard and saw then of word or glance 
or subtle play of feature. But because of his 
mature years, and his uniform kindness to all in 
his flock, the vicar’s name was never seriously 
linked with that of the young girl ; and if the 
parish had any suspicion at all of a more than 
pastorly interest in her, they were quite allayed 
some time later, when at St. George’s, Hanover 
Square, Joan Rawksley was made one with that 
dashing young officer, the Hon. Mr. Delmar. 
For, whatever the effort cost him, it was the vicar 
who smilingly ordered the ringers to their bells ; 
who with beaming face umpired the sports on 
the village green ; and who laughingly helped 
old Peter home, when over-much toasting had 
unsettled his outlook. And when, after the 
honeymoon, the young people came to Wrock- 
sley for a farewell day or two, before sailing for 
India, it was the vicar who gave them a welcome 
beside which Mr. Rawksley’s was tepid, not to 
say sullen. 

That it should be so, made some wonder- 
ment for gossip to play with ; for the old yeo- 
man had gone up for the wedding in the blithest 
of humours, leaving money for the sports, and a 

215 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


dinner at the ‘ Crown,’ with a barrel or two of 
beer thrown in to give it a Bacchic flow. And 
now he who had seemed as jovial then as any 
Silenus, was walking up and down his acres, a 
moody, haggard man. But the busy tongues 
soon had the truth to wag with. Mr. Rawksley 
was found one morning, a few weeks later, lying 
still in his room, with a pistol in his hand, and 
wide-open eyes which never winked. It was 
his way of escaping from the two men in posses- 
sion. In no long time afterwards the manor- 
house and all in and about it were brought to 
the hammer. Instead of a rich man, the beautiful 
Miss Rawksley had wedded a penniless younger 
son. Perhaps only the vicar knew that she had 
not even married for love, but only for her 
father’s sake, to avert this ruin. 

A shadow grew to his face, and he became 
for a time fonder of his retirement than had 
been his wont. He walked a deal in his gar- 
den, as if, like Plato, he could think better 
there ; and sometimes, after sundown, he would 
cross over from the vicarage and pass through 
the green wicket to the avenue beyond. He 
would re-appear in an hour or so, but with 
paler face, as he paused to look up at the stars, 
216 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


as if wondering at their happy twinkling with 
that churchyard beneath them and such ruth 
as his. It was at some such moment, perhaps, 
that into his darkness certain fireflies of thought 
came dancing, like runaway stars themselves, to 
show him a path through the slough. Wrocksley 
was already recovering itself. The Saturday 
night hilarity at the ‘ Crown ’ had become less 
of a sputter ; timorous people had ceased to 
avoid the manor-house ; Peter had resumed his 
humming as he made his beds, or mowed neat- 
ness to the grassy places ; and now, as the 
harvest was gathered in, and all saw how rich 
and good it was, cheerfulness ruled the days, 
and soon the cheeriest of all was the vicar. 

From that time, as if impelled by some in- 
ward need for a life of wider relation, he became 
ceaselessly active in the parish ; but always with 
such tact and delicacy, such tenderness and 
affection for those both in and out of his flock 
— for there were some few dissenters at Wrock- 
sley — that the people’s regard for him became 
a sort of communal possession, a joint warming 
of hearts, felt rather than understood, as they 
felt the sunbeams without recking of heat-waves. 
It was not all done at once, nor did Wrocksley 
217 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


ever become, in the years that followed, an ideal 
village, where no sinning was, or naughtiness of 
nature. The- vicar knew his parish, knew it to 
be a very human little place, just as he was 
human, and no better to his own judging 
than any man of them all, who did his duty, 
and kept as good as he might, being a son 
of Adam and no angel. 

Yet withal the vicar lived a very lonely life 
— as lonely as any shepherd on the hillsides, 
whose flock is his only care, and who is glad 
to pipe for company, when all was safe, and no 
lambs were in the pits, or poor ewes in the 
waters of affliction. The vicar’s pipes were the 
organ-pipes, and young Caleb, the son of Peter, 
earned odd pennies by blowing breath to them, 
while the player’s long fingers moved lovingly 
about the worn yellow keys, filling the church 
with a faint atmosphere of music, which the 
roosting rooks could barely hear as they swayed 
overhead in the night wind. 

On one such evening, when the sun was 
behind the hills, and the mists were grey by 
the river, Peter stood at the bottom of his gar- 
den, smoking his pipe, and looking across his 
dormitory with eyes which had passed days in 
218 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


them. The church door was ajar, and slow- 
moving melodies floated over to the listener, 
gliding from one key to another in a major and 
minor chain, as if the vicar were telling musical 
beads. Peter knew those airs, and whose name 
it was on the front of the tattered book the 
player had before him ; but it was only rarely 
he heard them, and now, as he pulled at his 
shag, old faces shaped in the wreaths of it, and 
he was living again in times past, with a gentle 
puffing at the sight of them. 

Then, all at once, he saw his own churchyard 
again, and it was not an idle gaze. A dark figure 
had just glided in from the lich-gate, and was 
crouching now over by the palm cross, and 
Peter was watching her steadily, his heart work- 
ing faster than usual. She remained quite still ; 
but he could hear something athwart the melody- 
ing which made him put his pipe away and look 
as if he had never heard such a sound a thousand 
times before. 

He went slowly up to her, but she did not hear 
him, though she had ceased weeping and was 
listening to the organ, her black veil raised, so 
that her face was dimly visible. A white, wasted 
profile was all that he could see, but Peter knew 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


it well. She looked up half dazedly at the sound 
of her name ; then, faintly smiling, she caught 
his hand and kept it while she rose to her feet 
and made a motion to the church door. Peter, 
feeling the hint of it, led her thence, and they 
entered and stood a moment looking up at the 
grey head of the vicar, who, deep in an Ave 
Verum, played on in his little island of light, 
unconscious of everything. Peter felt his arm 
clutched tighter, and a pull back into the shadow 
of the doorway, where the trembling woman fell 
on the old fellow’s shoulder to weep anew. But 
starting up suddenly, she almost dragged him 
away, away to the gate into the lane, and on to 
his cottage, into which he had to assist her, so 
weak was she grown and helpless. 

The old organ, as if in a reverie of half-forgot- 
ten days, when it fluted to the touch of maiden 
fingers, discoursed a sweetness which it seldom 
gave to the coarser promptings of man. The 
saintly figures in the windows seemed ta awake 
and to listen in quaint attitudes ; the Virgin gazed 
more tenderly on her child ; the centurion’s 
visage softened as he looked on the kneeling 
women ; a benigner peace was in the face of 
the dead Christ. It was but the moon, slow- 


220 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


rising and shining softly through the many-hued 
figures ; and presently the player, seeing his 
shadow grow to the music-page, lifted his 
hands from the keys, and the organ, heaving 
a sigh from its leathern lungs, went back to its 
sleep. 

The vicar descended from the loft with the 
look of a man who had been dreaming a dream, 
and was still holding on by the fringe of it. But 
seeing the boy-face beside him, he smiled, and 
felt in his pocket for the expected coin, talking 
the while of the lad’s pet jackdaw, and of another 
one of Rheims, which he tells of as they walk 
together to the lich-gate. 

A few hours more, and Wrocksley is asleep 
under the moon, seeming in the yellow sheen 
only a shadow-village, shaped there from the 
mists which rest about it. But soon the dawn 
comes, and its cockcrows ring out, and it rouses 
grumblingly, yawning, and eye-rubbing into fuller 
wakefulness. Then it goes forth into the dewy 
lanes and fields, while the sun mounts higher, 
drinking up the mist and drying the tears of 
opening flower-eyes, till all is warm and lovable 
and fair to see, for it is autumn time, and lush 
with growth in garden and field. Therefore 


221 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSI.EY 


every one is easy-humoured and cheerful in greet- 
ing generally ; and it seems ill-fitting that Peter 
should be so gruff in his rejoinders and heavy of 
aspect, as he makes his way to the vicar’s orchard, 
scythe in hand. But so he is all day. He cuts 
his way between the trees, pausing here and there 
to whet his curved blade, with sometimes an anx- 
ious look across to his cottage, and then at the 
vicarage near him, as thought leapt from one to 
the other. And when, by-and-b}', Hannah brings 
him a jug of cider, and lingers plying questions, 
he turns on her almost angrily. 

‘ Never yo’ mind, lass, who her be ; nor why 
her came in the manner her did, an’ with such 
sickness on her. Keep yer teeth tight ; an’ if 
vicar tells yer it’s a fine day, or the like o’ 
that, say, Yes, it is,” an’ let him go his way. 
D’ye hear, Hannah ? D’ye hear ? ’ 

Hannah hears, but with eyes half frightened, 
and goes back with her jug, fuller of questions 
than ever. 

So the day wears on ; the sun nears the hills, 
and sets them all ablaze ; then the fire dies sul- 
len, and greyness comes and darkness, followed 
soon by a new dawn eastwards, where the moon 
mounts in the silence to look again at Wrocksley. 


222 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


It is so still that the vicar’s pen creaks like a tor- 
tured thing as it travels along, leaving brave words 
behind it. It is harvest time, and the vicar likes 
the subject. His lamp yellows as the white light 
comes stronger from the garden ; but pursuing 
his way he comes to an end at last, and is look- 
ing through the sermon, adding neater touches 
and rounding doubtful periods, when he glances 
up with a start. A shadow has crossed the 
papers. It is Peter at the open window, hat 
in hand. 

^ Sir, I ^ 

‘ Come in, man,’ says the vicar heartily. 
‘You quite startled me. Is Hannah asleep 
again ? ’ 

‘Not as I know of, sir. I came in through 
the side gate, an’ — an’ seeing yer in here, I 
made bold ’ 

‘It is no intrusion, Peter. I have just 
finished my writing, and am glad to see you. 
Anything wrong?’ 

Peter turns his hat round nervously, looks at 
the vicar, then out into the garden. 

‘ It’s a case o’ sickness, sir — a lady as maybe 
yo’ll remember. Her’s at my cottage now — 
Major Delmar’s widow, sir.’ 

223 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


Peter shufifies a foot, staring harder than ever 
at the moonlight. 

‘ Her’s bin ailing some time, it seems — ever - 
since she lost her son. He were washed over- 
board in a storm they had, an’ her’s never got 
over the shock it give her. She came back 
here o’ Thursday, an’ I saw her, an’ she arsked 
me to let her rest awhile. But she got worse, 
an’ I sent for Doctor Turrell o’ Bilchester. 
He’s just bin again — maybe yo’ heard the gig, 
sir — an’ he’s given her a draught. Her’s asleep 
now, but that weak, sir, her poor breath would 
scarce move a candle flame. Her arsked me 
not to tell yer, but she’s hardly bin sensible 
since, an’ I think it right you should know, sir, 
as an old — an old parishioner is back again 
among us.’ 

Still Peter looks away, torturing his hat. He 
can only hear laboured breathing, then a voice 
which he had never heard before. 

‘ I will go with you to her.’ 

But the vicar trembles into the chair again ; 
and Peter has to pour out a little wine from a 
decanter and offer it to him. 

‘Thank you, Peter. A touch of faintness. 
This heat is so trying. I am better now. 

224 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


Give me your arm. Ah, now we are right. 
Not so young as I was, Peter. Mrs. Delmar, 
you say? And she is back at Wrocksley? 
This way, Peter ; this way.’ 

They go out by the hall, where the vicar 
reaches for his wideawake, telling Hannah to 
go to bed if she likes, but to leave the side 
door on the latch. He is stronger now, and 
dispenses with Peter’s assistance as he walks to 
the cottage. 

Hour after hour the vicar watched, on his 
knees most of the time, but always with his 
eyes to the face on the pillow, which is so white 
among the dark masses of hair, and as still 
almost as a dead face. Prue, Peter’s eldest 
daughter, dozed fitfully the while in an adjoin- 
ing room, with little starts now and again, and 
a sleepy lifting of eyelids, lest she should go off 
altogether, and so lose hold of duty. But Prue 
grew heavier, for it had been ironing day, and 
the sun had been hot as well as the fire, and she 
had much enjoyed her supper ; so that, by-and- 
by, her head forgot its nodding, and Prue was 
soundly sleeping. 

Her sense of hearing was the first to awake 
15 225 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


— or seemed to be ; for she is not sure now 
whether the low voices speaking were mere 
dream-things only, or actual sounds which 
reached her. But what the few detached words 
were she would never say ; and when Peter 
first questioned her, and saw the purport of 
her look, he stooped and kissed her — a rare 
thing for him to do — and said, * Right, lass ! 
don’t tell even me.’ But while the words were 
still fresh in her brain, and she was standing 
with a flush half of shame at having yielded so 
to the comfort of the elbow-chair, she seemed 
struck by the silence about her, and wondering 
at it, made her way softly to the other room. 
She beheld the risen sun shining full on the face 
of the patient. It was quite still, and the half- 
shut eyes were glazing under their lashes. One 
arm was stretched out, showing some of its 
white roundness, and the hand was in those of 
the vicar’s, as he knelt with his forehead against 
it, silent and without motion. Prue was turning 
to go, feeling that was not a sight for her, when 
he looked up and saw her. He rose to his feet 
straightway, appearing calm, and his* voice was 
as usual as he crossed the limp hands, remarking 
that the end had come a few minutes ago, and 
226 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


that she might now shut out the sun. There 
was no dejection in his face ; only a strange 
light in his eyes, as when sorrow and gladness 
burn together and are one. 

That light was shining still, when three days 
later he conducted the body to the grave, and 
stood there in the sunbeams reading the office 
of the dead ; and Peter, seeing it, as he stood 
spade in hand apart from the people, looked 
down to his clayey boots ; but failing to see 
them, cleared his throat and cuffed Caleb’s ear 
for standing there with his hands in his pockets. 

But the vicar was never the same after that ; 
indeed he weakened so that he was ordered a 
long rest; and for a time Wrocksley was in 
charge of a locum tenens. In the following 
January the vicar returned, apparently strong 
again, and for some months appeared to be 
quite his old self. Towards September, how- 
ever, he fell away again. His nights became 
increasingly restless, and Hannah’s cookery of 
lessening account, which seemed to hurt her. 
She ran over to her home one evening to talk 
distressedly of it with her father. But Peter 
said nothing — only turned to Prue, and asked 
the date of the newspaper beside her. She 
227 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


told him, and he smoked on as before ; till Prue 
said suddenly : ‘ Why, this is the day Mrs. Del- 
mar died, father ! * 

‘ So it is, wench,’ said Peter ; ‘ an’ I put her 
to rest a year ago come Tuesday.’ 

There was more talk between Hannah and 
Prue ; then good-nights, and a mounting of 
lights to upper windows, which presently dark- 
ened again. 

Before long there is only one light shining 
in Wrocksley, and that is from the vicar’s 
bedroom. The moon, creeping higher, can see 
it beaming steadily hour after hour, like a 
great yellow eye glaring on to the churchyard. 
It is as if it saw something there, and cannot 
look away. The moon hides her face, and a 
low moaning comes from the trees. The eye 
glares fiercer in the new darkness, till the 
cloud has sailed on and the moon peers out 
again. The dawn comes, and the sun, and 
long shafts of light shine from between the trees 
on grinning gargoyle and mullioned window — 
shifting sun-patches fretted with leaves. But 
one beam shines full on the figure that lies 
there in sight of the vicarage window, and the 
dewdrops glint in the grey hair like gems that 
228 


THE VICAR OF WROCKSLEY 


have fallen on it. With his face to the ground, 
and his hands tightly clenching the grass, the 
vicar lies on, caring nothing for the sunbeam. 
A robin, perching on the headstone, sings greet- 
ing to him ; but he pays no heed. An old man 
stumbles across from the gate and kneels by 
him, calling his name. There is no answer ; and 
still calling, he turns the face upwards. But the 
wet features never change, and the pale lips 
have no word for him. Then Peter stands up 
and bares his old head. 

He was fast asleep, was the Vicar of 
Wrocksley. 


229 


Crooked Ways 

I 

Doctor Gaylen had made his last call, and 
walking his cob along the grassy margin of the 
road, appeared to be in no great hurry to get 
home. Being young — he was barely thirty — 
and impressionist enough to feel, without analys- 
ing, the winsomeness around him, he found it 
pleasant perhaps to play the laggard while the 
yellowing sun was lingering in the tree-tops, and 
the modest clouds, flushing beneath its amorous 
glare, were gathering round it, and casting a re- 
flected loveliness on all beneath them. Earth 
and sky indeed were all that a June sunset could 
make them : the air was fragrant with blossom 
breath and tuneful with bird-voices good to listen 
to. The doctor began to hum himself as he 
turned into a bye-lane, a short cut to Barcourt. 
He passed the Abbey Church, a quaint little 
230 


CROOKED WAYS 


fane which local tolerance had allowed to rise 
again from out the larger ruin which reared its 
Gothic windows high above it. The sound of 
the curfew followed him down the hill, and he 
looked across to the dismantled Grange as if it 
swung his thoughts there. In stormier days 
the place had sheltered a recusant Oswin, and 
as it stood now, grim and silent behind its 
weedy moat,, it bore many a mark of Noll’s 
rough usage. But the swallows twittered in 
the amber light, and in the chestnut trees the 
throstles lilted merrily as the rider passed. He 
took his cue from the birds, and resumed his 
barcarolle^ till a turn in the lane brought him to 
the highway again, close to some lodge gates. 

He turned in his saddle to look through the 
avenue of elms which led to the present home 
of the Oswins. It was not an idle glance, but a 
long kindly look whicli perhaps furnished the 
key to Lionel Gaylen’s blitheness to-night. His 
face changed, however, to sudden surprise, and 
he waved his arm to the woman who had just 
appeared to open the gates. She glanced up 
the drive and drew back the iron barriers just in 
time to let the Squire ride through without 
checking his pace, which became a swifter gal- 
231 


CROOKED WAYS 


lop once he was in the straight of the road. 
Following him came a groom, who exchanged a 
broad wink with the woman as he passed. 

Lionel looked after the pair curiously, but, 
hearing the woman chuckle, he turned to her. 

‘ Is all well at the hall, dame ? ’ 

‘ Ay, gallop along, gallop along,’ said she, 
not heeding his query as she gazed beneath her 
hand down the road. ‘ Thought the post-bag 
had a sting in it, a’ did. Will he catch it, think 
yer — the eight o’clock up ? ’ 

Barcourt station was nearly three miles away. 
Lionel looked at his watch. The train was due 
out in seven minutes. 

‘ At the rate he is going he may just 
manage ’ 

‘ But do you go too, sir ? ’ cried Dame 
Hedley, as if suddenly remembering something. 
‘ Bob’s bin gone this hour or more wi’ a letter 
for yer — a letter from Miss Edith. Her left it 
here this mornin’, an’ told me not to send it 
till sundown. Poor wench ! she’s hard put to, 
I’m thinkin’. But her’ll come back, sir ; her’ll 
come back, never yo’ fear. Strange doin’s, 
strange doin’s ; but the Lord’ll put ’em right, an’ 

the Squire will have his reckonin’ day or ’ 

232 


CROOKED WAYS 


OVhat on earth do you mean? Has Miss 
Osvvin gone away ? ’ 

‘ Gone away ! What else could she do, poor 
gell, an’ him ; — but there, I mustn’t tell yer 
that ; on’y this, doctor,’ lowering her voice, 

‘ on’y this, that it’s not after his niece Squire 
Oswin’s a-racin’ now. But he may race. Two 
days, two good days — that’s a fair start, ain’t 
it ? Ay, yo’ go too — ’ seeing her listener start 
impatiently off — ‘ but tek it kindly, lad ; tek it 
kindly. Her’ll come back an’ yer’ll be happier 
for the partin’ — the both on yer.’ 

Lionel drew his horse in on nearing the town, 
and rode up the High Street at a repressive 
canter. In a few minutes he was in the privacy 
of his room, reading the following letter : 

‘ I have been suddenly, called away by one who 
needs me, who is looking for me now, afraid of 
every moment which separates me from him. I 
have never mentioned him, and you — deeming 
him dead, perhaps, as others do, have forborne 
allusion to him. But my father is living, and 
though life is a broken mirror to him, he pieces it 
together at times and sees truth in it. I will not 
say what that truth is ; but it has driven him to 
rough measures with his keeper, and he is now in 

233 


CROOKED WAYS 


freedom, awaiting me and what love and helpful-’ 
ness a daughter may bring him. But, Lionel, my 
heart seems divided in two, and half of it is 
ready to break when I try to realise what this 
duty means. You have come into my life, and 
where all was winter you have made sweetest sum- 
mer; and now that I have to leave you, it seems 
so hard to say that it may be for a long, long time, 
perhaps for always. Yet say it I must, for while 
my father lives I must remain with him, and there 
are reasons why I cannot do so and have our where- 
abouts known — no, not even to you. 

‘If you love me you will not easily forget me; 
but for your own dear sake I wish now that you 
loved me less, that the pain of this severance might 
sooner leave you. But farewell, and forgive these 
tender words if they give your lesson a hard be- 
ginning. Forget me; submit to time’s own heal- 
ing, and some day perhaps my image will fade and 
another take its place in your heart, to grow there 
and make it bright, as I had hoped to do. For me 
I shall learn happiness, perhaps, in living for one 
whose weal must grow from my sacrifice. The 
thought quietens me. My poor, father — I am all 
he has in the world — I must go to him. Will 
you think of me sometimes? — but no, no; try to 
forget me, do ! God is looking on, and He will 
heal us both in His own good way. Farewell. 

‘ Edith.’ 


234 


CROOKED WAYS 


Lionel threw the letter down with a kind of 
moan. It hurt him beyond measure ; but with 
the pain there was a rising anger that he should 
be abandoned so entirely. Could she not have 
granted him one last interview, and given him a 
chance to understand more clearly the necessity 
for such a total disappearance ? There was 
something odd and Quixotic about the whole 
thing, which, allied with the mystery behind it, 
lent a deep irritation to his sense of loss. 

He sat down, chin to chest, and tried to think 
it out. But ratiocination was not easy, and after 
a while he jumped up and walked to and fro to 
let his feelings have a turn. Half maddened at 
last, he put on his hat and made his way to the 
lodge. 

But Dame Hedley would say very little. A 
letter had arrived for Miss Oswin that morning 
under her care, and the post-boy had gone by 
with the bag that evening to the Hall. Tom, 
the groom, had returned with the two horses, 
and the Squire was on his way South. That 
was all he could gather ; but she turned briskly 
to him as he was going. 

‘ But dunno yo’, by word or deed, doctor, try 
to seek ’em out. Keep among yer sick folk 

235 


CROOKED WAYS 


here, an’ if yer own heart’s a bit awry, why 
physic it wi’ patience an’ bide yer time. Miss 
Edith knows her way about, never yo’ fear ; an’ 
though her may be gone for years her’ll come 
back as sure as to-morrow’s sun. Jest yo’ let 
her be an’ gie her all the rope her wants. Lend 
me your ear an’ I’ll tell yer one thing.’ 

He walked back through the moonlight, heavy 
enough, but his anger was gone ; and when he 
got home he took out her letter, and, reading it 
through again, kissed it with quiet eyes. 

‘ Tiens ta foy,' said he, as he locked it in his 
desk. 


II 

The young doctor was in no better case than 
any other Benedick who has lost his heart to a 
woman and then lost both. He had lived some 
twenty-nine years in the world without knowing 
more of love than a passing singeing had given 
him in his student days at Guy’s, an experience 
which, having left a deposit of cynicism in his 
nature, had armed him against even Miss Oswin’s 
beauty, till a recent illness of hers, and his daily 
attendance on her in the absence of his senior, 
236 


CROOKED WAYS 


old Dr. Lance, had led to his heart’s undoing, 
and his patient’s too. In all the ardour, then, 
of a new-born passion he found it hard enough 
to go on week after week, hearing nothing and 
trying to beat against the wind of circumstance 
with what patch of hope he could raise to keep 
him going. The slow-going days made existence 
seem no better than a treadmill — a constant 
climbing to nowhere. He was afraid to think 
that it might always be so ; hope he must, in 
some sort, or go mad, he told himself. So he 
doggedly went his rounds, cheerfully as he might, 
but heavy at heart the while and downright 
unhappy. 

Squire Oswin, on his part, seemed hardly less 
troubled and cut up, and perhaps out of fellow- 
feeling he became wondrous kind to the doctor. 
He was a peculiar man : coarse and ill-favoured, 
with a choleric temper which too often broke 
bounds ; but Lionel was not unwilling to humour 
him, on the chance that the acquaintance might 
bring him tidings of the runaways. The Squire 
said ‘ runaway,’ never alluding to his brother, a 
delicacy which the other perfectly understood, 
and was careful accordingly. 

On this footing they were enjoying a post- 
237 


CROOKED WAYS 


prandial smoke together one evening in Sep- 
tember. Lionel sat back, staring absently into 
the twilight, while the Squire, puflfing busily, was 
watching him. They had exhausted a subject, 
and were in a conversational interregnum. The 
Squire blew a great cloud and crossed his legs 
impatiently. He disliked silence. 

‘ A penny for them, Gaylen,’ he said at last. 

Lionel started ; revived his languishing cigar ; 
then looked at his host. 

‘ No news, I suppose ? ’ 

‘ Not a whisper,’ said the Squire, sending forth 
another cloud. ‘ She’s as lost as a pin in a 
field.’ 

He noted the pale weariness in the listener’s 
face as he leaned back again. The Squire came 
to the conclusion that Lionel was no wiser than 
he, and he puffed more than ever in the new 
silence. 

* It’s hard on you, Gaylen, ’pon my word it 
is ! ’ he burst out at length. ‘ Looks as if she 
had jilted you, don’t it? The little witch. 
What possessed her to play this prank on us 
both ? forcing me to put detectives after her as 
if she had stolen the plate, and you — well, you 
bear up heartily, all considered. But we shall 
238 


CROOKED WAYS 


trace her yet, Gaylen. The world is only a 
bundle of hay, as Byron said, and if we lose a 
needle in it — why, there’s finding it, if we only 
search long enough. D — n them both — the 
detectives I mean.’ 

He jumped to his feet in a fume. 

‘ What now ? ’ he cried, glaring at the man- 
servant who had just entered. 

‘ Telegram, sir,’ said the man, holding the 
tray out nervously. 

The Squire snatched the message up with a 
snort. 

* Excuse me, doctor.’ 

Lionel watched him open the message, and 
was conscious of a thrill of interest as he saw 
him start, and an odd light flash to his eyes. 
It was some seconds before the Squire sank 
down into his chair with a groan. 

‘ Read it, Gaylen ; read it.’ 

He held the paper out, apparently quite un- 
manned. Lionel took it wonderingly, The 
message was from one of the detectives, and 
hailed from Chicago. 

^Lady and gentleman, answering description, 
killed, accident, North Pacific, month ago. 
Wilson.’ 


239 


CROOKED WAYS 


Squire Oswin, hand over face to conceal his 
emotion, watched through his fingers the white 
features and quivering hands of his visitor as he 
held the paper between them and read its tid- 
ings. He saw him suddenly clutch the chair- 
back as if he would have fallen else ; and 
perhaps he was sorry, for his chest heaved, 
and he forced something back — it was like a 
sob. 

‘Is this — is this true? Did you know they 
were in America? ’ said Lionel, recovering him- 
self and looking with set face at the other. 

The squire jumped to his feet. 

‘They! What do you mean, sir? Wilson 
traced her there, I suppose ; but that she 
had a man with her, another lover, why, sir, 
you ’ 

The rest was lost. With surprising sudden- 
ness the doctor’s hands had shot out, and had 
twined round the speaker’s throat like steel 
bands. 

‘ If you say another word I’ll shake the 
breath from your body, you lying old scoundrel. 
Faugh ! ’ 

He threw the struggling figure from him with 
a look of loathing. The Squire fell heavily to 


240 


CROOKED WAYS 


the ground, half rose again, and then fell back 
and lay without offering to move. 

Lionel stood a moment breathing hard and 
gazing with angry eyes at the prostrate man. 
Then he shook himself with a laugh, and reached 
for the water-bottle. 

* Are you better ? ’ he said, a few minutes 
later, as the Squire opened his eyes and stared 
blankly up at him. ‘ Can you understand 
what I say? Take this, it will quicken your 
hearing.’ 

The Squire drank the brandy willingly, but 
said nothing. He tried to rise, but Lionel 
forced him back on the cushion. 

“Better lie still a bit — but listen. I shall 
leave here in the morning. If I find the news 
concerning them to be true, I shall probably 
never return. If it prove false, you shall hear 
of me, if not of them, again. In the meanwhile 
keep guard on your temper : you are subject 
to apoplexy, and I, at least, don’t want you to 
die off just yet.’ 

In another minute he was gone. The Squire 
rose to his feet, felt his throat tenderly for a 
moment, and then drank another bumper of 
brandy. He rang the bell with a low laugh. 
i6 241 


CROOKED WAYS 


. ‘ Saddle Meg, and fetch Hillory at once,’ he 
told the man. 


Ill 

Two years went by, and it was June time 
again at Barcourt. The rooks chattered of it 
in the tree-tops ; the throstles piped of it, and 
the busy swallows, splashing in the sheen of the 
higher air, presaged its fair weather. Lionel 
Gaylen, walking between the garlanded hedge- 
rows far beneath, watched and listened, and 
was vaguely glad that all was so unchanged. 
For the years that had gone had seemed half 
a lifetime, and his altered subjectivity had cast 
a false light over things which made even the 
old scenes look strange at first. Leaving the 
town behind him, he had found his way into 
the familiar lanes ; and it was to satisfy a dis- 
tinct longing to be among them again, to live 
where Edith had lived, that he had come back 
to seek reinstatement with his old friend Lance. 
He was tired of wandering hither and thither, 
and here, in the quiet old-worldishness of Bar- 
court, he felt a sense of rest, as a fretful brook 
might when it loses itself in the peace of some 
shaded lagoon. 


242 


CROOKED WAYS 


Walking musingly on, heedless of the failing 
light, he came to the little church by the Grange. 
The Oswins had worshipped there in Royalist 
days, and he remembered that Edith herself had 
liked to walk over sometimes and kneel awhile 
in its dim stillness. He opened the gate and 
walked up to the door. It was past sundown, 
but it might be open, and so he found it. 

He went softly in and sat down near a little 
side chapel, in which a large crucifix hung. The 
afterglow showed faintly through the western 
window, and through that over the altar shone 
the soft light of the rising moon ; on the left, 
beneath a figure of the Virgin, a candle, left by 
some rustic devotee, gleamed faintly. 

The silence and the dimness of the place 
were quietening; its associations stirred tender 
thoughts without quickening the pulse. Lean- 
ing back with a grateful sense of these things, 
Lionel closed his eyes to look in at the vision 
which rose up in his fancy — the slim, girlish 
figure, kneeling saint-like with golden nimbus 
in the prayer-place of her fathers, her young 
heart stirring maybe at the ghostly touch of 
theirs, or with soft emotions such as maidens 
have on the shy eve of womanhood. 

243 


CROOKED WAYS 


When he opened his eyes again, the moon- 
light over the altar was brighter, yellowing bhe 
candle-flame and lending grey distinctness to 
the walls ; but what was it he saw there ? He 
leaned forward, straining his eyes — a faint 
golden island in the greyness, and beneath it 
the kneeling form of a woman. 

An odd sensation of awe moved through him. 
She had not been there a few minutes ago, he 
had not heard her approach; perhaps he was 
only dreaming. He pressed his hand over his 
eyes, hardly daring to look in at what was so 
like a spectre, and more than half doubting his 
wakefulness. Feeling at last perfectly sure of it, 
he looked out again. The figure was gone — 
no, there it was in the shadow, gliding away 
from him. It crossed the moon-rays into the 
shadows on the other side, where, for an instant, 
it paused, looking back with white face in his 
direction. 

He sprang to his feet and almost staggered 
towards it. He tried to cry out, but could not. 
He saw it turn and disappear behind the organ, 
but when he got there the recess was vacant — 
his hands only groped the air. His loud cry 
echoed strangely in the empty church. 

244 


CROOKED WAYS 


^ Edith, my loved one ! where are you ? It 
is I, Lionel. Edith ! — ah, she cannot hear. It 
was but fancy — a poor brain-freak. What has 
come to me, I wonder ? ’ 

He stood in the aisle, looking round dazedly. 
The still flame of the little candle gave now an 
eerie quality to the silence, which sent some- 
thing like a shudder through him. 

‘It is this tomb of a church,’ he muttered, 
and he found his way to the door and walked 
out under the stars. He looked up and 
around. A corncrake was grating from the 
field near by, a white owl glided noiselessly 
past, and a great bat brushed his ear with a 
derisive squeaking. He shivered again, then 
laughed at himself, and turned down the lane 
to Barcourt. 

The diamond windows of the lodge were 
bright as he passed, and, remembering the old 
servitor who had been Miss Oswin’s nurse, he 
went up to see how she might be. 

‘Well, dame, how is the sciatica?’ he said, 
cheerily as he could, as the son let him in. 

The old lady dropped her knitting with a 
start. She would have risen, but he playfully 
pushed her back to her seat. 

245 


CROOKED WAYS 


‘ Stay where you are, dame ; but say some- 
thing, do, or I shall doubt my welcome.’ 

‘Lord bless us!’ said she, finding her voice 
at last. 

‘ Amen 1 ’ added Lionel, sitting down, and 
holding his head in his hands distractedly. ‘ How 
are you getting on ? ’ 

‘An’ me a-thinkin’ of yer that very minute,’ 
was her answer. 

‘ Which reminds me of an old saying,’ said he, 
leaning back and noting the gladness in her fur- 
rowed face. .‘But I ’m only Lionel Gaylen.’ 

‘ Ay, to be sure, an ’ thank God for it ! ’ she 
replied, looking round her. Bob had left the 
room. ‘ Why ever did yer go away, lad ? ’ turn- 
ing again to him. ‘ Better a’ stayed at home 
all the while, ’stead o’ huntin’ for other folks’ 
graves, as if there were nothin’ better to do, an’ 
the world so sick as it is I Daresay yo’re sorry 
now as yo’ never found ’em ? ’ Her black eyes 
twinkled through her spectacles. 

‘ Dunno be hurt, sir, at my way,’ she went on, 
getting no answer. ‘ It were mortal cruel to yer, 
an’ to all on us, ’cept the Squire ; he solaced 
himself wi’ a wife, an’ a pretty piece her was, 
too, to run away i’ that style, though there’s 
246 


CROOKED WAYS 


them as don’t blame her. An’ now he’s taken 
to worse ways than ever, an’ near ruined th’ old 
place. But let him, have his head ; there’s a 
judgment at the lane-end ; maybe a little afore 
it, now yoVe come. He’s as right as I am, 
doctor, an’ yo’re the man to prove it ! ’ 

She turned to him, tremulous with excitement. 
‘ Who do I mean ? ’ she went on, in answer 
to his question ; ‘ why, Mr. Os win, the real 
Squire ; him as is hiding his head in th’ old 
ruin yonder, more daft now reason’s wi’ him 
than ever he were in his mania days. God an’ 
Miss Edith together ha’ cured him, doctor, as 
sure ’ 

Lionel jumped to his feet. 

‘They are alive then? — they are here? — 
the figure in the church was not a delusion? 
Oh, say it again, good dame, say it again ! ’ 

‘ Lor ! how ye do tek on, now,’ she said, 
almost querulously. ‘ Sit thee down, do, an’ 
listen quiet, like a Christian. Thought yer 
had a cool head, or a’ might not a’ told yer the 
secret. If it were known at th’ Hall that he 
were livin’ half-a-mile off, he’d be carted off to 
an asylum again, an’ no one to say nay to the 
doin’ of it. The Squire, as next o’ kin, holds 
247 


CROOKED WAYS 


the power, an’ it were ’cos he lost sight of ’em 
two years ago that he were so put out. Yer 
mind that night when he made for the station 
like a mad thing?’ 

‘ Yes,’ said Lionel, manfully holding himself 
in his chair. 

‘ Well, that were two days after the escape. 
’Course he was too late, for while he was 
swearin’ at his hirelings in Hampshire, Mr. 
Oswin an’ his daughter were on their way to 
Canady. There they stayed till two months 
ago, when a sudden cravin’-like to see th’ old 
scenes brought ’em both back. They’ve bin 
here just a week, an’ no one the wiser but th’ 
old priest an’ my Bob an’ his wife. She’s there 
now, awaitin’ on ’em. They occupy two secret 
rooms in the west wing, which have hidden 
hunted papishers afore now, an’ th’ old furniture 
there still. But, bless yer ! they’re as happy as 
the day’s long wi’ their books an’ things. He’s 
writin’ something, a history or something o’ that ; 
an’ on’y larfs when I tell him how things are 
goin’ on at th’ Hall. But it must not be, doc- 
tor ! ’ she cried excitedly ; ‘ it’s a sin, if ever 
there was one, an’ Miss Edith a thinkin’ of yer 
more than ever her did. Why — mercy save us ! ’ 
248 


CROOKED WAYS 


She trembled to her feet, staring at the figure 
which stood in the doorway. Lionel turned and 
beheld a tall, venerable-looking man of about 
fifty. He was smiling, hat in hand, and only 
appeared to see the woman. 

‘ Is this wise o’ yer, sir ? ’ she said, offering him 
a chair. ‘ If yo’ can on’y come out wi’ th’ bats 
yo’ should keep away from th’ night-hawks. But 
this gentleman is a friend to all on us. Yo’ve 
heard, maybe, of Doctor Gaylen ? ’ 

‘ To-night for the first time,’ said Mr. Oswin, 
turning to Lionel with a pleasant smile ; ‘ and it 
was to seek you, sir, that, at some personal risk, I 
have extended my walk to-night. May I ask the 
honour of your company back with me ? I will 
explain as we go along.’ 

‘ Now God be praised ! ’ said the dame, look- 
ing after them up the road. ‘ If the lad don’t 
put things right there’s no sense in sane men, an’ 
doctrin’s all a fraud.’ 


IV 

Mr. Oswin’s eyes glanced approvingly at his 
companion as they walked away. ‘ I have learned 
249 


CROOKED WAYS 


to-night a secret which ray daughter has kept 
from rae for a couple of years,’ he began, in a 
low deliberate voice. ‘ She is very dear to rae, 
but behind her loving ways and her gentleness 
I never suspected that she had a deep soitow of 
her own. She never spoke of it, and though her 
manner has been a little triste at times, I ascribed 
it to our position and other things, having myself 
known melancholy through thinking of them. 
To-night, in announcing my intention of leaving 
here, I observed tears in her eyes and a sup- 
pressed agitation which at first puzzled me. 
When I asked her what it meant she only fell 
on my shoulder and sobbed, unable to say a 
word. In doing so the locket at her neck fell 
to the ground and opened, showing a face quite 
unknown to me, but which I am glad to have 
alongside me now.’ 

Lionel bowed. 

‘ As gently as I could I got the truth from her,’ 
proceeded Mr. Oswin. ‘ It seems she had seen 
you in the church to-night, and, fearing to speak 
with you, had fled by the passage which connects 
it with the Grange. She heard you cry her name, 
and judged by that you were still true to her. 
The incident unhinged her, naturally; hence 
250 


CROOKED WAYS 


her emotion when I spoke of leaving. Now, 
I love my daughter as only a father can ; but I 
cannot allow her happiness to be sacrificed to 
my unfortunate situation. Between us, I think, 
we might preserve it without her feeling that she 
is wronging either party. Your name and family 
are known to me, and I give my full and glad 
consent to your suit.’ 

He offered his hand. 

‘ How can I sufficiently thank you ? ’ was all 
Lionel could say as he gripped it. 

^ There are difficulties in the way,’ Mr. Oswin 
continued ; ‘ and perhaps the best way to explain 
them is to go back to their beginning.’ 

He walked on a few yards in silence, a look of 
pain in his face as memory worked back to the 
starting- place of all his troubles. 

‘ My wife was a Roman Catholic,’ he began, 
‘ the daughter of an Italian lady I met at Flor- 
ence. I married her against my father’s wish, 
and I am sorry to say we quarrelled so seriously 
on the subject that he commanded me never to 
approach his presence again. He cut off my 
allowance and we came to London, where, on a 
small annuity my wife enjoyed, and some earn- 
ings from my pen, we were able to live a quiet, 
25 ^ 


CROOKED WAYS 


but sufficiently happy life. We lived for each 
other and our child ; and each year — but I need 
not dwell upon it. She was snatched away from 
me when Edith was four years of age. My grief 
was very great, and for months I was inconsol- 
able. In the midst of the trouble my brother 
visited me. Perhaps my conduct appeared odd 
to him. We had always been much estranged, 
and at that painful time his presence was an irri- 
tant I had hard work to brook. I avoided him, 
and kept my room all I could. One day, whilst 
I was in the middle of one of the painful out- 
flowings which sometimes carried me away, and 
quite unconscious of everything about me, Robert 
entered with two gentlemen, whom he introduced 
as friends of his. I was surprised by the intrusion, 
and only sat in moody silence, but conscious of 
a rising anger against my brother’s flippant man- 
ner, which at last got the better of me, and 
brought me to my feet in a state bordering on 
frenzy. I commanded them all three to leave 
the room. They did so, but I remember Robert’s 
smile as he turned at the door and bowed him- 
self with mock ceremony from my presence. I 
never saw him again. In two days, on the evi- 
dence of two practitioners — my late visitors — 
252 


CROOKED WAYS 


my person was seized, and I was taken to a 
private asylum, where, thanks to the care to 
make me so, I really did lose my reason, so 
that when the lunacy inspector came I was as 
bona fide a case as he could wish for. But, as 
time went on, I enjoyed occasional intervals of 
right-mindedness which made me feel my position 
acutely. In one of these mental oases I ex- 
plained my case to the inspector, but nothing 
came of it. So the years went on, till one day I 
attacked my keeper as we were walking in the 
garden. Leaving him stunned, I made my es- 
cape, and found my way to Heniton, over the 
hill yonder. There I learnt that my father had 
been dead many years; that my brother had 
charge of the estate ; and that he had adopted 
and reared my daughter — why, I know not, 
unless it was to blind people. He never spoke 
of me, and the belief grew that I was dead. But 
Edith knew otherwise, and I wrote her, care of 
Dame Hedley (a trustworthy old soul, who was 
also in the secret, but held her tongue for the 
family’s sake), to come to me. To shorten the 
story, she came, and we went at once to America. 
There I placed myself under the charge of a 
brain physician, who, without entirely curing 

253 


CROOKED WAYS 


me, did lessen the frequency of my attacks. I 
have been without a lapse now for several 
months.’ 

Lionel glanced round in surprise. 

* In the course of a year or so/ the other 
went on, ‘ I may be sufficiently recovered — 
there is no knowing — to get medical testimony 
that I am compos mentis^ and in a fit state to 
take my proper social position. In the mean- 
while the estate is protected by Chancery, and 
no great harm ’ 

‘ But you forget, sir,’ put in Lionel, ‘ legal 
evidence of your death, two years ago, placed 
the property in your brother’s possession, and 
there is talk in the town of the last bit of 
land being mortgaged in a day or two. The 
position is serious, and requires your instant 
intervention.’ 

Mr. Os win paused in his walk, surprise and 
pain in his face. 

‘Does villany go so far?’ he said at last. 
‘ Dame Hedley was right, then ; it is the land 
he is squandering as well as the income ; yet, if 
I intervene, my liberty^ will be at stake ; my 
hope of recovery will be gone ; my — Oh ! it is 
too cruel ! ’ 


254 


CROOKED WAYS 


They walked on in silence till they came to 
the church. 

‘However, we will talk it over again,’ said 
Mr. Oswin with a sigh. ‘Our safest way is 
by the passage. It has become the privilege 
of an Oswin to use a conspirator’s burrow in 
order to get to his hall’ 

He smiled bitterly as he looked carefully 
round before entering. In a minute more he 
had opened a small door in the woodwork at 
the back of the organ, made by the builders 
evidently, to afford ingress to the instrument. 
Asking Lionel not to move, he stooped for 
a lantern. He drew back the slide, and a 
yellow bar of light shone out, revealing at his 
feet an old stone staircase, the slab covering of 
which lay near. 

In the space of a few minutes they were 
standing in a long, half-roofless gallery, with 
worm-eaten wainscot and rotting floors. 

‘ It is not all as bad as this,’ said Mr. Oswin, 
turning with a smile into a large apartment on 
the right, which was also wainscoted. They 
were half across it when a panel was drawn 
back and Miss Oswin appeared. 

‘ Oh, padre dear, I’m so afraid of these noc- 

255 


CROOKED WAYS 


turnal walks. Have you enjoyed it? How 
tired you look ! ’ 

Lionel, standing unobserved in the shadow, 
made by the light from the inner room, felt a 
quick thumping within him which was almost 
painful. The sight of her, the sound of her 
voice, her whole beautiful presence, struck his 
senses with a kind of shock. 

‘Nay, not so hasty,’ said Mr. Oswin, playfully 
resisting her gentle pulling to the door. ‘ Guess 
what Prospero has found in the moonlight and 
brought hither to his prison flower.’ 

Edith looked up at him curiously, then some- 
thing directed her vision over his shoulder, and 
her grasp tightened on her father’s arm. 

‘No cause for trembling, lassie,’ said he 
gently. ‘ Come forward, doctor, and be a tree 
to this tendril. Ay, it’s he, girl. Let him have 
you — I know all about it, and I know what 
young hearts are — there she goes ! God bless 
them both ! ’ 

He quietly withdrew, leaving them in the shaft 
of light, unconscious of everything but the 
happy tumult within them, and the glad eye 
and lip-service, which are love’s own dumb- 
talk. 


256 


CROOKED WAYS 


V 

The young doctor was very busy during the 
next three days. So, too, were Lawyer Hillory 
and his surveyor — with much head-shaking and 
sad comment, from Barcourt. The Squire also 
was busy — with the bottle. His life lately had 
become more and more bacchanalian, and, from 
an occasional devotee, he had become a slave 
to the wine-god. But on Thursday afternoon 
his lawyer was due, and the Squire aD’ays be- 
lieved in business before pleasure. As he sat 
expectant in his library chair, he thought what 
an excellent maxim that was ; and he poured 
out only half a glass more, with a sense of self- 
repression which perhaps emphasised the smack 
of his lips. 

‘ Show him in,’ he said to the man, when the 
solicitor was announced. 

He sat back in his chair, and tried to focus 
his gaze on the inkstand. His brows drew 
closer together with the effort, and as a further 
test he slowly extended his forefinger, making 
it travel somewhat spirally to the object in his 
view. 

‘ Sober as a judge,’ said he, looking as grave 
17 257 


CROOKED WAYS 


as one as he leaned back again. ‘Well, Hil- 
lory/ turning to the door as that gentleman 
appeared, ‘glad to see you, Hillory. Pour 
yourself out a drop of wine and hand me the 
deeds. I’ll be looking through them while the 
grape warms your old blood. Got any blood, 
Hillory, or are you just bones and sheepskin 
with tape for ligaments?’ 

The Squire always laughed at his own hu- 
mour, and he did now into a severe fit of 
coughing. This enabled the lawyer to unfasten 
his bag and take out the documents without 
further comment from his client. Mr. Hillory 
was a meek little man, long accustomed to the 
Squire’s peculiar manner, and preferring not 
to take umbrage where so much good profit 
was. 

‘ Why did you make me laugh ? ’ growled the 
Squire, snatching up the papers and tearing 
them open. ‘What is all this talk about the 
Grange being haunted? Heard anything of it?’ 

Mr. Hillory said that it had not come to his 
knowledge ; but the Squire, glaring along the 
lines of the mortgage, appeared not to catch 
the answer, and only said a loud ‘ Eh ?’ 

‘ It has not come to my knowledge,’ repeated 
258 


CROOKED WAYS 


Mr. Hillory in a louder voice ; ^ but it is possibly 
only some idle tale.’ 

‘ Idle tale ! ’ muttered his client, still reading 
on till he came to the end of the page, when he 
looked up. * Idle tale ! Why, one of the keepers 
swore to me that while he was watching for 
those rascally poachers the other night, he saw 
a man’s face so like my father’s, who lies now 
in the vault yonder, that he had half a mind 
to drop his gun and leave the hares to their 
luck. And Tim is a strong-minded fellow, and 
wouldn’t tell a lie to save his neck. That’s 
more than you can say, Hillory. What’s this? 
Only twelve hundred for the West Uplands, 
and all that timber ! zounds, man ! it’s giving it 
away.’ 

And so began a discussion on the merits of 
the valuation, which lasted some time, and not 
to the improving of the Squire’s temper. At 
length he reached for his pen and dipped it 
into the ink preparatory to signing. 

‘What now?’ he cried angrily, as the man 
appeared with the salver. ‘ Away with you ! 
Let them wait, whoever it be. Don’t you see 
I’m engaged?’ 

The man began a stammering explanation, 

259 


CROOKED WAYS 


but disappeared just in time to escape Mr. 
Hillory’s bag, which had been hurled at him. 

‘ Deuce take the people ! ’ said the Squire, 
appeasing himself with another glass of Martelle, 
and taking up his pen again. 

He dipped it into the ink and drew his brows 
together for the act of signing. Then slowly 
the quill began to creak through his name. 
But it was stopped midway : a long, thin 
hand had closed over the Squire’s and held 
it prisoner. 

‘ Gently, Robert, gently,’ said a low voice. 
For some seconds there was perfect stillness in 
the room. The lawyer sat glued to his chair ; 
the Squire glared wildly up at the face at his 
elbow, while Lionel and Edith stood aside, 
wondering whether he was struck dumb in his 
fright. They both started as he suddenly 
jumped to his feet with a fearful cry, and shrank 
away from the mild eyes of his brother. Edith 
clung to her protector, who, however, pushed 
her gently aside and made a step forward. 
His eyes were anxiously fixed on the Squire, 
in whose breast mingled fear and astonish- 
ment were fast condensing into ungovernable 
rage. 


260 


CROOKED WAYS 


' Calm yourself, Squire, for heaven’s sake ! ’ 
cried Lionel. 

But the Squire appeared not to hear him. 
His limbs bent as if for a spring: but, instead 
of leaping forth, as he appeared on the point 
of doing, he only gave a guttural cry and fell 
heavily forward into his brother’s arms. 

Lionel drew the weeping girl to him, soothing 
her with word and caress. He had found her 
in the drawing-room, whither she had flown to 
escape the hushed bustle of the household. 

‘But it was so horrible,’ she said, in reply to 
his entreaty to dry her tears. ‘ He was not 
wholly bad, dear, and was often good and kind 
to me ; it would have been so much nicer could 
he have given up possession quietly and gone 
away to live. He would not have wanted for 
money, for you know how kind poor father is. 
But where is he? Let me go to him.’ 

Lionel restrained her. 

‘ He desires to be alone for a short time, and 
asked me to join you. He is rather cut up. It 
does seem a pity that his new liberty should 
have such a sad beginning. But you must not 
let it oppress you so. In a few weeks’ time, 
261 


CROOKED WAYS 


when the incident will be farther from you, you 
will look at it more calmly. Now kiss me again, 
and we will walk in the garden before the sun is 
quite gone. There is peace there : let us take 
the hint from Nature.’ 

‘ Ay, there they be/ said Dame Hedley, see- 
ing the twain from the bedroom, where she had 
just finished the first offices of the death-cham- 
ber ; ‘ an’ the Lord sees ’em as well as me, an’ 
He knows it’s for the best, for all His rough 
dealin’ this day. Ay, it were His will ; but eh, 
eh ! I wish the Squire could a’ said a prayer of 
his own, ’stead o’ leavin’ it all to us. It were 
o’er sudden, it were, an’ after such a life too. 
He ’ 

She looked suddenly back into the room, 
having heard footsteps. Mr. Oswin was stand- 
ing by the bedside, contemplating the still re- 
mains of his brother. The dame, who had 
known them as boys together, guessed his 
thoughts, and, with an old servitor’s freedom, 
broke in upon them and drew him gently to the 
window. 

‘ Look on the living as well, sir, an’ remember 
all that has passed. There they be, and he’s 
givin’ her a sprig o’ heartsease. It’s the colour 
262 


CROOKED WAYS 


of her own eyes, as are turned to yer now, with 
the dew in them both. Pore gell, her’s as sad 
as yo’ be ; but there ! yo’ll all be cheery again 

’fore the cam’s i’ the ricks, an’ ’ 

‘Yes, yes, dame. Leave me awhile, do. I’m 
in no humour for talk. Go ! ’ 

Something in his manner silenced the woman, 
and she left him without more words. But when 
the young people re-entered the drawing-room a 
little later, they found Mr. Oswin awaiting them. 
Edith ran to him, and he smiled down at her as 
she looked tenderly up at him. 

‘Nay, I’m not so sad, Edie. But we must 
think kindly of him in the happiness that is com- 
ing. Take her, Gaylen, and let us forget this 
affair as soon as may be. Crooked ways cannot 
be always straightened without a wrench at the 
start. God keep you both ! ’ 


263 


Elsie 


I 

It is many years ago now, but it all came back 
to me to-day at the sound of an old tune which 
she used to play when loneliness sat hard upon 
her, and she would take up her fiddle and wan- 
der off into a spirit-world of her own making. 
She often went off so, making me think, as I 
watched her unawares, of Shelley’s lanthe when 
her spirit and its habitation parted company for 
a while. And when she would stop, and I knew 
she was all at Norton Priors again, I would walk 
away wonderingly, feeling, among other things, 
very coarse and humble beside such as she. 

It was not always so ; for, till she was fifteen 
or thereabouts, she had raised no thought in me 
beyond an admiration of her slim uprightness 
and her grace of movement, which always put 
me in mind of the does in the Castle park, and 
264 


ELSIE 


pleased me, maybe, in the same way. But per- 
haps because I was slow to see it, or because I 
had known her from a child and taken her as 
part of the daily life of the place, I never felt the 
smallest tremor from her beauty, till one day 
when she ran into the shop all covered with dust 
from a fall that she had had, and held out her 
hand for me to draw from it the thorn that was 
paining her. Tenderly as might be I removed 
the thorn and bandaged with her handkerchief 
the little red place, like an adder’s bite, which it 
had left; and I had no sooner done it than, 
childlike, she threw her arms round my neck 
and kissed me. I was a hulking lad of twenty 
then, and a bit sheepish over softness of that 
kind ; but while she hung on to me that instant, 
and drew her head back before untying her 
arms, I saw that in her face which, when she 
was gone, went on vibrating within me, and 
playing such a tune among my heart-strings that 
I could get no sleep that night for listening to it, 
so to speak. 

From that day I was never the same, and I 
hardly knew why. But heedless-like, I let my 
thoughts go as they would, and Elsie was always 
their pivot. It was distracting at first, till I got 
265 


ELSIE 


used to it, and could work on in a dual way, 
thinking hard on the matter in hand, but know- 
ing her presence within me and grateful for it. 
In this way she wound herself into the com- 
mon life of each day, becoming a part of it — a 
golden thread among the homespun. And so 
it grew. 

But she never dreamt it ; and as she got older, 
and the Misses Garten shaped her into quiet 
young-ladyhood, our mental and social differ- 
ences moved her farther and farther from me, 
till I began to feel no better than a sort of thistle 
doing homage to a rose nodding far above me. 
All the same it was good to keep her where she 
was, and to go on day after day saying nothing 
of it. It was not a ‘ sweet sorrow ’ exactly, such 
as Shakespeare speaks of, though it became one 
in after years, and is one now, maybe. So long 
as I could see her occasionally, and feel that 
she lived so near me, breathing the same air and 
sharing the same village life, I felt content ; and, 
now and again, a quiet little hope would stir in 
me that by study and hard work I might raise 
myself nearer to her level. For, after all, I told 
myself, she was only a miller’s daughter, and 
her widowed mother, whose father had been a 
266 


ELSIE 


major and one of the swells of Cheltenham, 
could not forget that she had married plain 
Dan Onslow out of love and nothing else. But 
it was like clay trying to shape its own vessel 
without the potter’s hand. I was big and awk- 
ward, and the most I could do was to fill my 
emptiness with such knowledge as the few books 
and little leisure would let me. When my father 
died, however, and I came into the business, 
as well as a nice little sum at the bank, I felt 
a little less afraid of her ; and when I put up the 
new sign which told the folks that I was ‘ George 
Crannock, Carpenter and Wheelwright,’ I for- 
got my sorrow and loneliness in the pride of the 
moment, for I was twenty-four, and a master- 
man, and the thought puffed me up. 

She was away at that time, I remember, stay- 
ing with some relations at Gloucester ; but I got 
to know the day she was returning, and when 
the ‘Nemoton Arms ’ ’bus passed through on its 
way to the station at Wonley, I gazed after Tom 
Nelson with a touch of envy that he should have 
the first sight of her. Tom, like Phaeton, was 
not an over-careful driver, and I could see him 
swaying in his seat as he turned the corner at 
the finger-post as if he had lost some of his bal- 
267 


ELSIE 


last. I remembered then that it was market-day 
at Nemoton ; but Tom had driven the ’bus for 
ten years or more, and I thought nothing more 
of it as I took up mallet and chisel for the spoke- 
hole I was making. 

Three parts of an hour went by, and I found 
myself listening to the sound of wheels, though 
I knew the ’bus must be a couple of miles off at 
least. But the minutes went on till it really was 
due. Jem was sawing a thickish piece of ash, 
and I stood up and asked him if his buff Leg- 
horn had hatched yet. His saw stopped mid- 
way, and I got a moment’s stillness as he wiped 
his brow. He talked on for five minutes or 
more, then bent to his sawing again. I picked 
up the spoke, but threw it down, and moved to 
the door impatiently. Then a distant rumbling 
reached me, and I went in again, trying not 
to notice my own fluttering. But the wheels 
stopped in front of the door, and, looking up, I 
saw it was only Farmer Waghorn in his gig. 

‘ There be a job for thee at Two-mile Cor- 
ner, Garge,’ said he. ‘ Nemoton ’bus run agen 
Squire’s cart an’ lost near-wheel. No one hurt; 
but Parson thinks yo’ can put wheel right if yo’ 
go down. Him an’ his son were in it, along wi’ 
268 


ELSIE 


Miss Onslow. They’re walking up, an’ mebbe 
yo’ll meet ’em.’ 

And meet theni I did, coming quietly along 
by Arbury Wood. Mr. St. John, the new vicar, 
spoke first ; and while he was telling what had 
happened, I looked at Elsie, and for a moment 
our eyes met. She flushed a bit and turned 
her head, for my glance had been too long, and 
I reddened myself at the thought of it. Her 
companion, Henry St. John, without noticing 
me, motioned to go on ; but she stood her 
ground, and when I turned to go, she came 
straight to me, and looked up with her hand 
touching my arm. 

* I am so sorry, Mr. Crannock,’ said she. 

‘ But there’s no harm done. Miss Onslow,’ 
said the vicar. ^ Crannock will get a stroke of 
work, and the ’bus a new driver, let us hope, 
after this.’ 

But I knew what she meant, with a sudden 
pinch of remorse ; for I had thought as much 
of my own advance as of my father’s death. I 
thanked her as well as I could, and seeing her 
hand extended, I took it in mine, and could feel 
the gloved fingers tighten ever so little with the 
sympathy that moved her. I forgot her fine- 
269 


ELSIE 


lady aspect and everything else, as I looked into 
her eyes and saw what was in them. 

' God bless you, Elsie ! ’ 

She flashed another look of kindliness, and 
went her way with the others. But I had seen 
Henry’s brows arch at my impulsive familiarity 
with her name, and, looking back, noted his bent 
attitude of attention as he walked beside her. 

I wondered uneasily how much of the Long 
Vacation he would spend at Norton Priors. 
For it must have been he who had brought the 
happy flush to her face by his Oxford talk and 
his well-favouredness. I walked on ; but there 
was something gone from the sunlight, and the 
tool-bag seemed as heavy as two. 

II 

As time went on, I found myself thinking as 
much of young St. John as of Elsie. He had 
come into the peace of our village life like a 
dragon-fly in a garden, giving one a sense of 
disquiet, which the butterflies and bees never 
do. I speak for myself, for every one else said 
how quiet and nice he was. Before a week was 
over, half the women in the place were in love 
270 


with him, and I didn’t wonder at it, though I 
got to hate his snaye ways and his marvellous 
blue eyes. 1 knew which way they were turn- 
ing, and that Elsie had looked into them, and 
had caught something from them which was 
altering her daily. He acted indeed like a 
sun on her ; she seemed to grow taller, more 
queenly : her eyes took a soft dreaminess to 
them, and in the curves of her lips there was 
a richer swell. 

For her sake 1 ought to have been glad that 
love had come to her with its creative touch, 
making the world all new again, and hallowing 
it with sweeter meanings, which before she had 
never known. But all the while I had misgiv- 
ings when I thought of the vicar’s pride of 
birth — he was an Hon. Rev. — and the pos- 
sibility that the young graduate was only butter- 
flying after all. I misjudged him, as I came to 
know afterwards; but jealousy had twisted me, 
and my thoughts worked 'out of the true,’ like 
a wheel on a bent axle. 

But as far as Elsie was concerned she seemed 
happy enough, till the day after their picnic in 
the park, when something occurred which made 
my heart ache for her. I thought it was coming 
271 


ELSIE 


when the vicar passed on his way to the mill- 
house, for there was anger in his face and a hard 
uncharity quite foreign to it. In the space of 
twenty minutes, and while I was putting on my 
coat to leave, he reappeared, and with a lift of 
his hat came away. As he passed now his look 
was changed, and there was a beam of satisfac- 
tion in it, with a dash of sadness which set me 
all agog to know what it might mean. 

I could only surmise, however, and wonder 
painfully how much it might concern the weal 
of Elsie. I was doing so at my fishing that 
night — for all taste for study had left me — 
when Henry came by with a spring in his step 
and a tune in his head, which he hummed gaily 
as he passed on his way to the mill. Some 
blackthorns screened me from the path, and I 
watched him till he disappeared behind the 
granary. The cherry orchard was beyond, and 
there Elsie, no doubt, was awaiting him. Here 
a fish gave a tug at the rod, and I landed a 
perch. I threw the line out anew, but couldn’t 
keep still, through thinking of the tryst in the 
orchard ; so I put up the tackle and went 
home. 

Next day about two the Nemoton 'bus, instead 
272 


ELSIE 


of passing straight on, turned up the lane to the 
vicarage. It drove by presently with the two St. 
Johns in it, and on its roof were three trunks 
marked in big white letters, ‘ H. ST. J.’ Jem 
had been repairing the mill-wheel since the 
morning, and crossed the road as the ’bus 
turned the corner. 

‘ Summat wrong wi’ young Missie this marnin’, 
guv’nor,’ said he. ‘ Her passed down brook- 
side just now, wi’ t’ collie, white as a daisy, an’ 
arl red about the eyes, as if her’d bin cryin’. 
Th’ old leddy’s arl right too. Thought perhaps 
her’d had another fit and frightened the gell. 
That wheel o’ theirn won’t turn much longer, 
I’m thinkin’ — it’s gone reg’lar rotten, it has. 
Seems to me there ain’t too much money movin’ 
there, Mester Crannock.’ 

I went on with my planning, whistling a lame 
tune to myself, till, as thought joined thought, 
and one thing fitted into another, like mortise 
and tenon, my bile got the better of me, and I 
threw the plane down, telling Jem to jump into 
the sawpit. When we had done, and made 
lengths of a good-sized tree, Jem climbed out 
and wiped his face with a slow stare at me, 
which set me smiling; for quietness had come 
i8 273 


ELSIE 


to me, and after three hours’ distilling of it, I 
had found a soul of good in the evil that had 
happened. I told Jem to go home, and soon 
after went myself, and sat up till twelve o’clock 
that night book-reading. 

Then I walked out in the stillness, and, yield- 
ing to the inward pulling I could feel, went over 
to the mill-house, and gazed up at the little 
leaded window of the room where Elsie had 
slept from a little one. I mounted the stile of 
the croft, and, under a tree-shadow which the 
moon made, sat listening to the weir, and castle- 
building on the ruins of her lost happiness. A 
little click came athwart it all, and I could see 
the casement swing outwards, and there was 
Elsie among the ivy, her hair all loose, and fall- 
ing in brown waves on the whiteness of her bed 
dress. But her face was as white as it, as she 
looked up at the moon, her eyes glistening in its 
light like two dewdrops on a jonquil. There 
was a distraught eerie look in them which gave 
me an inward aching that she should take it so 
hard. Then she leaned her chin on her hands 
and gazed straight before her with a set stare. 
Presently her thoughts moved her lips, and be- 
came sounds in the stillness. 


274 


ELSIE 


The broken sentences would look nothing on 
paper ; nor is it for me to write down the doings 
of a maiden’s soul when it comes forth in the 
solitude, thinking no one nigh to hear its soft 
plaints and its moanings. But as I listened, my 
head bowed, and my hope died away that I 
could ever turn such love to me now that its 
tendrils had so wound round another’s image. 
As well ask the brook to flow back from the 
river, or the flowers to look away from the sun 
in the morning. A cloud came between us and 
the moon, and when it had passed, Elsie’s face 
was no longer in the ivy. 

Ill 

But time brings its own heart-ease to those 
who will submit to its healing, and not nurse 
their wound as some mothers do dead babes. 
It went hard with Elsie for some months, as I 
could tell by the looks of her ; but gradually her 
sick-visiting — to which she had turned, as sore 
hearts will — brought peace to her, and some of 
the roundness of feature which she had lost. 
The life took her out of herself, and gave play to 
all that was finest in her nature ; so that, as 

275 


ELSIE 


time went on and she ripened to fuller woman- 
hood, the beauty she had became less physical, 
and more the expression of a fine spirituality. 
It was not saintliness exactly — though Farmer 
Waghorn said she was an angel in woman’s gear 
— for it was something her violin and her read- 
ing had given her as much as her good-doing. 
She was in that state when love and renuncia- 
tion, working together, force the soul into sight 
of higher issues, towards which it grows because 
it must, or faint. I didn’t think it then, but I 
do now. 

I was one of those who shared in this larger 
life, though for a long time I felt that I was no 
more to her, as we walked together from church, 
or met on the brook-side, than any other son 
of Adam with whom she exchanged words as 
neighbourly. But gradually she became more 
careless of the reserve behind which worked her 
inner nature, and we grew more visible one to 
the other, though I strove always to hide my 
secret for fear of frightening her off, and she 
said nothing of hers, appearing seldom to think 
of it, but only of what we talked on. 

Then hope grew big within me ; and I 
worked on with a will and a good heart, care- 
276 


ELSIE 


less of the meainng in her great wistful eyes, 
or of the weird throbbing melodies which came 
sometimes from her violin as she played in the 
twilight across the soft murmur of the weir. 

She was playing so one June evening as I 
lingered by the granary on my way to the 
brook-side — which was my favourite walk 
because perhaps it was hers — when. Dobson, 
the mill foreman, joined me. Something in 
his face made me look again at him. 

‘ Some strange talk at “ White Hart ” to-night, 
Garge,’ said he, walking on beside me with eyes 
straight in front of him. 

‘Do they all look as sour as you on it?’ I 
asked, ill-humouredly, for I wanted to be alone 
just then. 

‘ Look sour, do T ? — Well, I ain’t that ; I’m 
downright sorry, lad. One o’ Lawyer Sharp’s 
men is there, half-seas over, an’ he’s let it arl 
out. There’s goin’ to be a meetin’ o’ creditors. 
It’s Higgins’s doin’ — the corn factor. He put 
in a writ ; an’ the others got wind of it an’ they 
arl swooped down like a lot o’ kites on a lame 
sparrer. If he’d on’y bided his time a bit, 
there’d a’ bin no harm done : there’s plenty o’ 
money out, on’y it’s a bit tight’ 

277 


ELSIE 


I stood still in surprise, and he stopped too, 
and across the momentary silence came the wail 
of Elsie’s fiddle. 

‘ Do you mean that there’s money enough 
out to pay all debts?’ said I, stepping on 
again. 

‘ I’m pretty sure on ’t,’ said Dobson. 
‘ Higgins on’y done it ’cos her refused to 
give him a bill o’ sale on the mill. He’s 
had his wall eyes on th’ old place these ten 
years or more. He’s for pushing things to 
bankruptcy now, so as he may buy it up and 
run it hisself. Rawlins thinks so, and so do I.’ 

Rawlins was Mrs. Onslow’s clerk and man- 
ager, and I asked Dobson where he was. 
He told me, and I sought him out. Half an 
hour later I was in Mrs. Onslow’s parlour. 
She rose, in her quiet ladylike way, with some 
surprise in her face, which always had in it the 
half-dazed look of a confirmed epileptic. Say- 
ing nothing of what I had heard, I asked her 
at once whether I might put four hundred 
pounds in the business — three-fourths payable 
at once, and the remainder in a month. 
Higgins’s debt was two hundred and sixty 
pounds. I watched her closely while the offer 
278 


ELSIE 


worked its way well into her mind. She was 
a proud woman, and unwilling to state how 
things were. At last she said — and I remem- 
ber the shake in her voice — that she would 
accept the offer subject to her and my lawyer s 
approval, after conferring together on the value 
of the business. 

‘ That’ll be all right, ma’am,’ said I heartily. 
^ ril go to Nemoton in the morning and see the 
pair of them. Maybe you’d like to send some 
written instructions by me?’ 

She took the hint, and started to write a 
line or two to Mr. Sharp ; but seeing her hand 
was unsteady and something trickle down on 
to the paper, I took my leave hastily, saying 
I would call again in an hour’s time. I did so ; 
and Elsie and her mother were there together, 
waiting with glad faces to see me. It was the 
happiest night qf my life ; and when sleeping- 
time came, I hardly got a wink through think- 
ing of Elsie’s smiles, and the kiss of her hand 
she allowed me to take when I held it in mine 
for the parting. 

The upshot was that Higgins was paid, and 
the other creditors argued into good sense at 
a private meeting we called. And when the 
279 


ELSIE 


mill-wheel had turned another three months or 
so things were all safe again, and I — I was 
engaged to Elsie. 

Ay, it is true ; and I was the blithest man 
in Norton Priors or anywhere thereabouts. 
How it happened would take too long to tell, 
and, moreover, I have little heart to do it, as I 
look back now to recall the foolishness of my 
Paradise. It was nothing else ; for all the while 
it was not me she loved at all, but Henry St. 
John, who had taken orders, and avowed him- 
self a celibate, as some do. But she had given 
him up, as I well knew ; and there was enough 
affection in her manner to make me believe 
that I had won my way into her heart, and 
not only into its vestibule. She was a gentle, 
loving thing to all about her ; and I believe now 
that she took me only out of kindness, seeing 
me so far gone that she hadn’t the courage to 
say nay to my pleading. Then Mrs. Onslow 
helped it along, having taken a fancy to me, 
and seeing in the match, perhaps, good likeli- 
hood of happiness to Elsie. I was to go and 
live at the mill-house, and after a time to leave 
off wheelwrighting and manage the business, 
Rawlins having grown a bit old and ‘ dotty,’ as 
280 


ELSIE 


we said in oiir parts. And so it was planned 
out, and love shone all about it, and I was no 
more capable of seeing spot or blur in the 
picture than the sun is of seeing darkness. Yet 
it was only a vision and a vain thing. < 


IV 

We were sorry when the vicar died, as he did 
in the following May, rather suddenly. I had 
reckoned on his joining our hands at midsummer, 
having a liking for his quiet impressiveness, so 
different from the sleepy automatism we had 
been accustomed to at Norton Priors. His 
reading of a burial would make all eyes wet; 
but, like April rain, there was a touch of sun in 
it, and the mourners went away easier at heart 
from the comfort he had given them. He had 
a way of joining happy couples which made the 
homeliest faces beautiful, for the sense that 
heaven itself had blessed them, and that there 
was no ‘for worse’ about it. And when the 
christenings came, he would turn every heart 
towards the little ones by his tenderness of way 
and the love for them beaming from his eyes. 

281 


ELSIE 


Elsie was reminding me of these things, and 
telling how she came to admire and to work for 
him, as we walked in the lane the night of the 
funeral day. It was late, for she had been at a 
bedside at Nemoton till the ’bus had set out to 
meet the last up-train. I had been to the 
funeral, and had seen Henry St. John there, 
but was afraid to tell her so, and she avoided 
asking, though her thoughts must have turned to 
him many times as she walked to and fro beside 
me talking gently of his father. 

The moon rose big over Arbury Wood, 
yellowing to brighter gold as it mounted higher 
on its way ; and I could see by its light the soft 
velvet of Elsie’s eyes, and that something deep 
down in them which I could never fathom. I 
lost it as we turned for the last time and neared 
the mill; but as we stood beneath the privet 
arch leading to the garden, I saw it again as she 
looked across to the moon dreamily. 

‘ And yet there was a time,’ said she, without 
turning her head, ^when I disliked the vicar 
almost to hatred. I thought him hard, and 
capable even of cruelty to any one who might 
stand in the way of any cherished wish or plan. 
He was ’ 


282 


ELSIE 


She shrank suddenly into the shadow of the 
arch, pulling me with her, and staring with wide 
eyes across at the stile of the croft. I looked 
too, and saw a tall dark figure approach it from 
the other side and lean on the top rail. And in 
the sheen of the moon I saw that it was Henry 
St. John. Elsie trembled, and I could hear the 
quick thud, thud of her heart. A great ache 
grew to mine, and I was ready to groan when I 
looked across at the pale beauty of Henry’s face 
as he gazed up at the house, thinking of Elsie. 
She was in my arms, and there was the man she 
loved. Ah ! the pain of it ! For a moment my 
sight seemed to go ; then a hot rage sent the 
blood round me, and I could have raised her up 
and hurled her across to him ; but that too went 
off, and gave way to a mad sense of possession, 
which tightened my hold on her as she leaned 
heavily upon me. But she knew nothing of it, 
for as I peered close at the pale oval of her face, 
I saw that her eyes were shut, and that her 
parted lips had lost their redness. I glanced 
back at the stile, but Henry was gone; then 
I laughed, and kissed Elsie’s forehead passion- 
ately. Her lips quivered, and her eyes opened, 
staring absently up into mine, till memory came, 
283 


ELSIE 


and then she looked out again, trying gently to 
force herself from me. 

‘ Let me go — how dare you ! ’ she cried with 
sudden anger. 

I loosed my hold, and stood still, the words 
ringing in my head strangely. 

‘Forgive me, George — I was hasty. I 
don’t think I am quite well. Shall we say 
good- night ? ’ 

I said the word, and no more, and watched 
her glide away. But she turned again and ran 
back, and held her lips up for the kiss she had 
denied me. Could any man stand it? I 
caught her up and asked God to bless her 
always. And bless her He did in His own good 
way, though it was hard to see at the time that 
He had the handling of it. 

For from that night Elsie was never the same 
to me. As our marriage day neared she ap- 
peared to lose all heart in things, all desire to 
say or do ; and seemed no better than a parched 
lily that hangs its head in hopelessness. Her 
fresh comeliness left her ; her face thinned 
down ; and sometimes her eyes had in them 
a look like a spent deer when it falls and awaits 
the hounds at its heels. I could bear it no 
284 


ELSIE 


longer, and, saying nothing to any one, set out 
for London to where Henry St. John had gone 
the day after the funeral. It was Saturday night 
when I arrived ; but I traced him on the follow- 
ing morning to a big church in the suburbs, 
where I saw him in his vestments, assisting 
in the service. I sat till it was over, and then 
sought him at the Clergy House, as they called 
it, adjoining the church. 

As simply as I could, I told him how things 
were — that he must marry Elsie, and not I. 
He listened quietly, his face a shade paler, and 
his blue eyes softening and hardening by turns. 
When I had done, he got on his feet and paced 
up and down in a troubled way. I sat still, 
feeling very rough and coarse in such a fine 
room and beside such a man. He sat down 
again, and now I saw that his eyes had hardened 
and remained so. In a slow, deliberate way, he 
began to explain how he was placed ; that out of 
love of his father, and a strong predilection for the 
work of his Church, he had resolved to devote 
himself to it, and to make no other ties. He had 
doubted the sincerity of Elsie’s refusal, but had 
accepted it, from pride partly that he should be 
refused, and out of fear that he might for ever 
285 


ELSIE 


estrange himself from his parent by persisting in 
his suit. He had now reason to suspect that his 
father had seen Elsie, and prevailed upon her, 
by forcible arguments, to refuse him. I might 
have made this clear to him, but held my tongue 
and let him go on, which he did eloquently, and 
with much good sense from his point of view. 

But I thought of Elsie, and struck in impa- 
tiently. ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘you can no more love 
mankind without first loving some one about 
you, than you can make a wheel without a hub. 
God made you two for each other, as He made 
the laws which show that every man can work 
better under the chastening influence of a good 
woman and of the home she hallows, than with- 
out such aid. But whether celibacy be right or 
not for one in your calling doesn’t affect the 
duty before you. You have made Elsie love 
you, and you will mar, if not ruin, her own life 
unless you take her to you and give her the lov- 
ing support of yours. Man ! man ! — can you 
hesitate ? Why, she’s worth a thousand of you ! ’ 

‘ So she is, Crannock,’ said he quietly and 
without offence at my outburst ; ‘ and you don’t 
know how your words try my fealty to the 
mission I have taken up. Leave me ; let me 
286 


ELSIE 


think it over ; but don’t hope. I may not 
lightly forswear principles such as mine. Go ; 
and in a few days you or she shall hear from 
me, according as my decision shapes.’ 

And so I left him, and made my way to 
Norton Priors, which 1 reached after three 
days’ absence. It surprised me to find the shop 
shut and nothing going on ; but Dobson, across 
at the mill, seeing me staring about, walked 
over and made it clear. Jem and two of his 
children were down with typhoid fever ; and 
Mrs. Onslow had just sent for the doctor to see 
to Elsie, who had been sitting up with the little 
ones all night, and had gone home feeling queer 
herself. 

It was true enough ; and in twenty-four hours 
Elsie was tossing about in her bed, delirious. I 
hung about the house, unable to do a thing, as 
day followed day and she got lower and lower in 
the grip of the fever. It went to my heart to 
see her wasted face and her great eyes flaming 
so from their sockets, while her poor mad talk 
about Henry St. John and the love she bore him 
nearly set me mad too. But she got so weak at 
last that she could do no more than whisper, and 
that but seldom ; and one night her mother and 
287 


ELSIE 


the doctor and I were all in the room together, 
expecting her to go every minute. 

I had sent a telegram to Henry, telling him 
the news, and leaving it to himself to come or 
not as he liked. It was now past midnight, 
and the last ’bus had glided over the tan an hour 
ago, as I had seen from the open window. But 
while the minutes went on, and we sat saying 
nothing, a sound was borne in to my ears which 
set my pulse at the double. It was the faintest 
of sounds, hardly discernible above the hushed 
voice of the weir ; but it drew nearer and nearer, 
till we could all hear the horse as it galloped its 
hardest towards us. It was muffled a minute as 
it came through Arbury Wood ; but again the 
hoofs rang out, and in another three minutes 
were echoing like thunder in the quiet of the 
village. I looked from the window, and saw the 
horse on its haunches as the rider pulled up and 
leapt from the saddle. He saw my face at the 
casement, and I remember his breathless cry as 
he looked wildly up. 

‘ Is she alive ? — Elsie ! — I’ve come to see 
her. Let me in, for God’s sake ! — She must 
not die ! ’ 

His voice rang into the room with odd 
288 


ELSIE 


effect on us all.. Elsie heard it, and made a 
slight movement, murmuring his name. Then 
she breathed a faint little sigh ; and the doctor 
bent his head anxiously, as if he feared her 
heart had stopped. But no — it was beating 
steadily ; and he looked up with a light in his 
eyes, saying in a whisper that Elsie was saved. 

I met Henry on the stairs, and told him 
^ what he had done. His head sank on my 
shoulder, and he wept like any girl. And I 
couldn’t blame him, for my own eyes were wet, 
and my heart ready to split with its gladness. 
In such moments we do strange things, and 
what did I do then but kiss Henry on the 
temple, feeling drawn to him irresistibly. He 
had saved Elsie ; and she loved him, and had 
every right to love him, comely as he was, and 
so tender-hearted. 

I carried on the mill for a year or two after 
that, and was always glad to hear news of their 
happiness away in Hampshire, where they had 
settled. But I sold the old place to Higgins at 
last, and the carpentering to a brother of Dob- 
son’s ; for poor Jem was in the churchyard 
along with his young ones — and then I went 
19 289 


ELSIE 


Winchester way to say good-bye. It was then 
I had my last sight of Elsie as she sat in the 
Rectory garden, making some tiny clothes, with 
soft hope in her eyes and gladness. And be- 
cause she was happy, so was I ; and they all 
thought, as they should, that I was not much 
the worse for my loss. So I came out to Mel- 
bourne, and let time and hard work soften it 
down to one of those might-have-beens which 
we solitaries muse of when the pipe is alight and 
old faces shape in the curl of the smoke. 

Sweet Elsie ! She has gone her way long 
syne, as tender things will ; but she remembered 
me at the last, and sent me a braid of her hair, 
with a sisterly word or two and a blessing, to 
which Henry added, ^ God’s will be done ! ’ 
And so it all came back at the sound of the 
fiddle ; and when I asked the lady what she’d 
been playing, she said it was Schubert’s * Adieu 
de Beranger.’ 


THE END 


290 










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